Meta is suing the Federal Trade Commission, challenging the constitutionality of its in-house enforcement powers in a bid to stop the agency from unilaterally changing the terms of a 2020 privacy settlement.
The tech giant argued in its suit filed late Wednesday that the agency has “structurally unconstitutional authority” in how it enforces cases against companies through its in-house administrative court.
On Monday, Meta lost a bid to bar the FTC from reopening a 2020 enforcement order against the company, in which the agency accused Meta of privacy violations against children. Meta filed an appeal to that decision on Tuesday. Meta is also seeking to pause the FTC’s case while its lawsuit and appeal play out.
As part of its 2020 settlement Meta paid a $5 billion fine and agreed to make major changes to its privacy practices.
“The FTC’s unilateral attempt to rewrite our privacy settlement agreement raises serious and important issues about the FTC’s constitutional authority and Meta’s due process rights,” Chris Sgro, a Meta spokesperson, said in a statement. “Monday’s ruling did not reach those issues and the Judge suggested that Meta raise them in a separate suit. The FTC shouldn’t be the prosecutor, judge, and jury in the same case.”
The FTC declined to comment.
The claims: The FTC is able to handle enforcement through two methods: By filing a lawsuit through a federal court, or bringing its case directly to a company through its “administrative process,” a structure created by Congress in the FTC Act of 1914.
Companies facing these in-house cases can either settle the charges or challenge the complaint with an administrative law judge, where the FTC commissioners vote on a final decision. At that point companies can appeal in a federal appellate court of their choice.
Meta’s lawsuit argues that this structure is unconstitutional and violates its due process rights, claiming that it allows the FTC to be both the prosecutor and the judge in its enforcement.
Echoing past complaints: Other companies have made similar arguments in the past to restrict regulatory agencies.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s authority to enforce federal laws, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also faces similar legaltests of its authority.
Illumina, the gene sequencing equipment maker, also has a pending challenge to the FTC’s in-house court as it defends its takeover of cancer test-maker Grail. A decision on that is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
In April, the Supreme Court ruled against the FTC, saying defendants can bring constitutional challenges to the agency’s administrative enforcement authority prior to resolving the underlying case. In that case, the FTC dropped its challenge to the merger of two police equipment-makers, rather than litigate whether its procedures are constitutional.
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Navy warship sailing near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait shot down a drone launched from Yemen, a U.S. official said Wednesday, in the latest in a string of threats from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
The official said according to initial reports, USS Carney, a Navy destroyer, deemed the drone — an Iranian-made KAS-04 — to be a threat and shot it down over water in the southern Red Sea as the ship was moving toward the strait. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a military operation not yet made public.
The Wednesday shootdown comes a day after an Iranian drone flew within 1,500 yards of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier as it was conducting flight operations in international waters in the Arabian Gulf.
Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said the drone “violated safety precautions” by not staying more than 10 nautical miles from the ship. The drone ignored multiple warnings but eventually turned away.
Earlier this month, another Navy destroyer, the USS Thomas Hudner, shot down a drone that was heading toward the ship as it sailed in the southern Red Sea. It also was near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and it shot down the drone over the water.
The Red Sea, stretching from Egypt’s Suez Canal to the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait separating the Arabian Peninsula from Africa, is a key trade route for global shipping and energy supplies. The U.S. Navy has stationed multiple ships in the sea since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, which has heightened tensions in the region.
President Joe Biden suggested that conditioning future military aid to Israel was a “worthwhile thought.” But days later, administration officials are shutting down any talk of that happening.
Senior U.S. officials hit the Sunday shows to rule out the proposal, hinting — but not outright saying — there wouldn’t be a shift in the administration’s Israel policy. Now three U.S. officials say Biden won’t restrict support for Israel any time soon.
“It’s not something we’re currently pursuing,” said one of the officials, like others granted anonymity to reveal sensitive internal thinking.
Another official suggested that Biden’s aside, made in response to a reporter’s question, was less about siding with progressive sentiment and more a window into his private frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden has long been privately critical of “Bibi,” and he groused to confidants over Thanksgiving that the prime minister could be a challenging partner, according to another of the officials. Biden believed that Netanyahu hasn’t always focused on the hostages and his quip about the aid likely reflected concerns about Netanyahu’s leadership going forward. The remark leaves some strategic ambiguity that the administration might shift on aid down the line — serving as a way for Biden to keep Netanyahu in check.
Still, the White House’s current stance could put the president on a collision course with members of his own party. Senate Democrats on Tuesday met to discuss pressuring the White House on conditionality, with some of Biden’s staunchest allies noting he could use current regulations to restrict aid.
“There are conditions that are already attached to our aid to a wide range of countries,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), one of the president’s closest friends in Congress, said Tuesday on Fox News. “The conditions that already apply under law are sufficient for this circumstance.”
The headwinds from Biden’s party have only grown in recent weeks.
This month, congressional Democrats first quietly, then publicly came out in support of imposing conditions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was first out of the gate, proposing that Israel not get any more weapons until it stops “the indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza and commits to serious peace talks, among other stipulations.
Biden’s comment appears to have made other lawmakers more comfortable to advocate for the once-toxic idea, though many Republicans and Democrats remain opposed to it. “We regularly condition our aid to allies based upon compliance with U.S. law and international law,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel, told CNN on Sunday. “It’s very consistent with the ways in which we have dispensed aid, especially during wartime, to allies.”
The call for conditions on military support followed an intense push by progressive Democrats to have the administration support a full cease-fire between Israel and Gaza, rather than the temporary pause now in effect to secure the release of Hamas-held hostages.
The administration is using the nearly week-long pause to urge the Israeli government to be more targeted and deliberate when it resumes its ground operations, particularly as it moves into the country’s south, where thousands of civilians have taken shelter, said the first U.S. official.
Biden administration officials have advised Israel from the beginning to moderate its initial invasion plans, with limited success. Israel “adapted their battle plan” significantly to reduce the number of ground troops sent into Gaza in the invasion’s initial stages, the official said.
But Biden’s continued strong support for Israel’s offensive has incensed his left flank, leaving him vulnerable in a tight race against Donald Trump, his expected 2024 Republican rival. Some Democrats in swing states like Michigan say they won’t pull the lever for the president’s reelection because he lost their vote for supporting Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — during which the militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took around 240 hostages.
Indeed, progressives and some mainstream Democrats note there are already arms-transfer regulations requiring the U.S. to curb weapons sales to countries that violate human rights. Some proponents of imposing conditions say that Israel, which has killed more than 14,000 people in Gaza since the war started, has met that threshold.
“If anyone in Washington has broken the taboo of placing conditions on aid to Israel, it has been some of the leading progressives in Congress, not President Biden,” said Guy Ziv, an expert on U.S.-Israel policy at American University.
But even the president’s fleeting openness to aid restrictions highlights the death throes of a Washington taboo, one that leaders from both parties have been loath to break for years. The irony is that Biden, one of the most pro-Israel presidents of the modern era, welcomed a discussion that could eventually rupture the U.S.-Israel relationship if progressives urging conditions get their way.
“Failing to rule [conditions] out is very different than endorsing it, but perhaps it’s a sign of what we may see in the future in a post-Biden era,” Ziv said.
Previous presidents often criticized Israel. George W. Bush called for “an end to the occupation” of Palestinian lands. Barack Obama, with Biden as his No. 2, opposed Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. Even Trump, who was closely allied with Netanyahu, considered leveraging the annual $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. sends to Israel to broker a peace deal — until he was convinced there was “no connection” between the two.
No other commander in chief welcomed, albeit briefly, the idea of putting restrictions on support for Israel like Biden. It’s certainly a change from 2019, when then-candidate Biden called the idea of putting conditions on aid to Israel “absolutely outrageous.”
“It’s a significant and welcome shift,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former Sanders foreign policy adviser. “Hopefully we can get to a point where he acknowledges it’s actually required by law.”
Biden, however, maintains that eschewing the conditions proposal is what has led to dozens of hostages released from Hamas’ clutches and more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza while standing side by side with Israel.
“I don’t think if I started off with that we’d ever gotten to where we are today,” he said Friday in the same address. The U.S. is already sending military supplies to Israel for the war, and the president isn’t looking to insert conditions as a multi-billion Israel, Ukraine, border and Indo-Pacific aid bill winds its way through Congress. CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Qatar this week to converse with his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts on the hostage issue.
Biden is known for off-the-cuff remarks requiring his staff to clarify his comments, but none of his officials have said that his comments misstated the administration’s Israel policy.
Biden’s team is waiting for this media cycle to pass and go back to what it was already doing: supporting Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas. “He is going to continue to focus on what is going to generate results,” Sullivan, the national security adviser, said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday program. “That's the course that he's on.”
Lara Seligman contributed to this report.
An influential super PAC backed by the Koch brothers announced it is endorsing Nikki Haley in the 2024 presidential primary, giving her a significant financial boost ahead of the upcoming Iowa caucuses.
In a memo released on Tuesday morning, Americans for Prosperity Action said it planned to commit its extensive grassroots organization to helping Haley, and it will launch mail and television advertising campaigns to boost their on-the-ground efforts. Over the summer, the group announced it would plug up to $70 million into political races this year. It is the first time the group has weighed in during a presidential primary.
“Donald Trump and Joe Biden will only further perpetuate the country’s downward spiral in politics. Furthermore, a significant majority of voters want somebody new,” read the memo from Emily Seidel, a senior adviser to Americans for Prosperity Action.
According to the memo, the group pored over polling and feedback from voters before it reached the decision to back Haley, who has recently seen a rise in support. However, former President Donald Trump remains dominant in the race.
“At the outset of our strategy, we made clear that we would be business-like in our decision. We would support a candidate capable of turning the page on Washington’s toxic culture — and a candidate who can win. And last night, we concluded that analysis. That candidate is Nikki Haley,” the memo continued.
Haley’s campaign described AFP’s backing as a “huge grassroots endorsement,” and Haley in a statement said she was honored to receive the support.
“AFP Action’s members know that there is too much at stake in this election to sit on the sidelines,” Haley said. “This is a choice between freedom and socialism, individual liberty and big government, fiscal responsibility and spiraling debt. We have a country to save, and I’m grateful to have AFP Action by our side.”
A person close to the Koch network granted anonymity to disclose private conversations said the decision was made on Monday. They ultimately decided on Haley after considering North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The memo also made the case that choosing Trump as the nominee would affect other political races next cycle. "In sharp contrast to recent elections that were dominated by the negative baggage of Donald Trump and in which good candidates lost races that should have been won, Nikki Haley, at the top of the ticket, would boost candidates up and down the ballot, winning the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win," the memo read.
Economic conservative groups who have soured on Trump, like Americans for Prosperity and the Club for Growth, have for months funded generic anti-Trump advertising ahead of the first votes in early nominating states. But none of these groups, until now, had committed to backing any candidate in particular, calling into question whether the conservative effort to try to block Trump from securing the nomination would receive any traction.
DeSantis’ team slammed AFP’s decision on Tuesday soon after news of the Haley endorsement broke, with Communications Director Andrew Romeo sarcastically congratulating Trump on “securing the Koch endorsement.”
“Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley's candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign,” Romeo said.
AFP's memo offered a "note of appreciation" to the Florida governor and said that DeSantis supporters "will be disappointed in our decision," but said that it was vital for the field to consolidate. "Donald Trump won the nomination in 2016 largely because of a divided primary field, and we must not allow that to happen again, particularly when the stakes are even higher in 2024," the memo said.
AFP’s internal polling ahead of its endorsement had Haley outperforming DeSantis not just in New Hampshire, where she is currently ahead of him in public surveys, but also in Iowa, where DeSantis’ campaign has gone all-in ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung similarly slammed the endorsement, saying the group “has chosen to endorse a pro-China, open borders and globalist candidate” and repeating Trump’s “Birdbrain” nickname for his former United Nations ambassador.
Cheung declared that “no amount of shady money” from outside “Never Trump RINOs” would “stop the MAGA movement” or Trump from securing the Republican nomination.
With reporting from Adam Wren.
Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo’s consulting firm received $21 million in 2022 from a group that is a pillar of Leo’s aligned nonprofit network, according to a new tax filing.
That group, The 85 Fund, is part of an umbrella of nonprofits under investigation by the Washington, D.C. attorney general for potentially violating tax laws.
The tax filing, obtained by the watchdog group Accountable.US, shows that last year, The 85 Fund’s highest paid contractor was CRC Advisors, the for-profit firm where Leo is chair.
The revelation comes as D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is looking into the finances and expenditures associated with The 85 Fund and as Leo faces enhanced congressional scrutiny for his role in bolstering conservative legal movement, including advising President Donald Trump on judicial nominations.
Leo’s network came under investigation after a progressive watchdog group filed a complaint with the D.C. attorney general and the IRS following a POLITICO report in March that The 85 Fund had paid CRC $33.8 million over two years beginning in 2020. The complaint requested an investigation into what services were provided and whether Leo was in violation of laws against using charities for personal enrichment.
Around the time that news emerged about Schwalb’s investigation, it was also revealed that the 85 Fund moved its headquarters, which was a UPS mailbox, from the D.C. area to Texas. The 85 Fund had been incorporated in Virginia for nearly 20 years, and Leo is not cooperating with investigators. After CRC, the next highest paid contractor is $1.4 million to an educational advocacy group known as the Valentine Group.
