Politics

The price negotiation program, established by Democrats as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, is projected to save the government tens of billions of dollars in the coming years.

The US state of Mississippi has elected an openly gay person to its legislature for the first time ever.

Fabian Nelson’s victory this week left Louisiana as the only American state never to have elected an LGBTQ+ person to its legislature. And it served up a salve of sorts to a wave of laws passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, including a ban in Mississippi on gender-affirming hormones or surgery for anyone aged 17 or younger.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Nelson, a Democrat, called his election to the Mississippi house “a dream” and “shocking”. But Nelson, a foster father, also said: “Ultimately what won this campaign is the fact that I’m in touch with my community and the issues my community is facing.

“At the end of the day, I put my suit on the same way every other person who walks in that statehouse does. I’m going to walk in there, and I’m going to be a sound voice … in the state of Mississippi.”

Nelson, a 38-year-old realtor, won his seat by triumphing in a Democratic primary election runoff on Tuesday over Roshunda Harris-Allen, a local alderwoman and a professor of education at Tougaloo College, a historically Black institution. Tuesday’s race was necessary after neither Nelson nor Harris-Allen had secured a majority of the vote in a three-way primary on 8 August.

Republicans did not run a candidate for the general election scheduled for the fall. So, by virtue of his win on Tuesday, Nelson has clinched the statehouse seat that had been up for grabs. He is scheduled to be sworn in ahead of Mississippi’s next legislative session in January.

His district encompasses an area south of the state capital of Jackson. As he has told media outlets such as the Los Angeles Blade and LGBTQ Nation, Nelson’s priorities include pushing for an expansion of Mississippi’s Medicaid program as well as developing the economy and infrastructure for his district’s underserved areas.

He is also hoping to impede Republicans’ anti-LGBTQ legislative measures and efforts to disenfranchise voters in and around Jackson, which is mostly Democratic.

Nelson said his election accomplishes a goal he set for himself the day that he visited the state capitol building on an elementary school field trip and told his teacher he would eventually earn an office in the house.

“I’m still trying to process it and take it in,” Nelson said.

The state director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Mississippi chapter, which endorsed Nelson, said the election “sends a real message in a time when we are seeing attacks … against the LGBTQ+ community”.

“The majority of people reject that kind of animus,” the director, Rob Hill, told the AP. “I think a lot of youth around the state who have felt like their leaders are rejecting them or targeting them won’t feel as lonely today.”

The president of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, Annise Parker, added: “Voters in Mississippi should be proud of the history they’ve made but also proud to know they’ll be well represented by Fabian.”

Though Louisiana now stands as the only state to have never chosen an LGBTQ+ person for a seat in its legislature, it did elect its first openly gay Black man to public office late last year.

Davante Lewis won a New Orleans-based seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission in December after defeating a three-term incumbent

WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted flights by private jet last year and cited security concerns around the court's controversial abortion decision to justify some of the private travel, according to a disclosure form released on Thursday.

Thomas listed 2022 private jet trips provided by Texas businessman Harlan Crow to or from Dallas, Texas, for conferences in February and May, and to a property in upstate New York's Adirondack Mountains in July, the delayed filing showed.

Thomas has faced scrutiny following revelations that he had not disclosed luxury trips paid for by the wealthy benefactor.

He said in the document that he chose to fly by private plane in May 2022 because his "security detail recommended noncommercial travel whenever possible" due to the "increased security risk" following the leak that month of an opinion indicating that the court would overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

The following month, Thomas and other members of the court's conservative majority overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide, in a decision that largely tracked the leaked version.

The disclosure forms filed by Thomas and fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito come two months after the court's other seven justices' disclosures were released in June.

As former President Donald Trump dominates the Republican presidential primary, some liberal groups and legal experts contend that a rarely used clause of the Constitution prevents him from being president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.

Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.

The effort is likely to trigger a chain of lawsuits and appeals across several states that ultimately would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly in the midst of the 2024 primary season. The matter adds even more potential legal chaos to a nomination process already roiled by the front-runner facing four criminal trials.

A leader of the far-right Proud Boys has been sentenced to 17 years in prison, one of the longest sentences yet handed out over the US Capitol riot.

Prosecutors said US Army veteran Joe Biggs, 38, was an "instigator" of the storming of Congress on 6 January 2021.

The former Infowars correspondent was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges in May.

In court, Biggs pleaded for leniency and expressed remorse for his actions.

The sentence, handed down by US District Judge Timothy Kelly, is below both federal sentencing guidelines and the 33 years sought by prosecutors.

Another Proud Boys member, Zachary Rehl, was sentenced on Thursday to 15 years, also on a charge of seditious conspiracy.

Rehl, a former US Marine and leader of the Philadelphia branch of the Proud Boys, was seen on video spraying a chemical irritant at officers outside the Capitol during the riot.

Biggs was convicted of a slew of charges in May, including seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to use, intimidation or threats to prevent officials from discharging their duties and interference with law enforcement during civil disorder.

In a sentencing memo, prosecutors said that Biggs - a veteran of the war in Iraq and former correspondent for conspiracy website Infowars - "employed his military experience to direct and control large groups of men under his command" to lead a "revolt against the government".

"Biggs viewed himself and his movement as a second American revolution where he and the other 'patriots' would retake the government by force," the memo said.

In court, a tearful Biggs apologised for his actions and said he was "seduced" by the crowd on the day of the riot.

"I just moved forward. My curiosity got the better of me," he added. "I'm not a terrorist. I don't have hate in my heart."

"I know that I have to be punished, and I understand," Biggs said.

As he sentenced Biggs, Judge Kelly said he was "not trying to minimise the violence" but that the 6 January riot paled in comparison to other mass casualty events. He also said that a stricter sentence may have created sentencing disparities with other convicted rioters.

Biggs went to trial alongside four other Proud Boys members including former chair Enrique Tarrio, whose sentencing was abruptly postponed on Wednesday. His sentencing is now scheduled to take place next week. Prosecutors are seeking a 33-year sentence.

The Proud Boys involved in the case have said they plan to appeal against the conviction.

In court, federal prosecutor Jason McCullough said the crimes are "very serious" and that a stiff sentence would send a message ahead of next year's presidential election.

"There is a reason why we will hold our collective breaths as we approach future elections. … They pushed this to the edge of a constitutional crisis," he said.

Prosecutors used text messages, social media posts and videos to show that the Proud Boys were involved in a coordinated effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election at the Capitol.

As of 6 August, over 1,100 people had been arrested on charges related to the riot, resulting in over 630 guilty pleas and 110 convictions.

Another prominent participant in the riot, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill into law in June that prohibited cities from passing certain local ordinances. It was widely seen as an effort to curb the power of Democrat-led cities.

Now, a judge has ruled it unconstitutional.

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble announced the decision on Wednesday in response to a lawsuit from the city of Houston.

"I am thrilled that Houston, our legal department, and sister cities were able to obtain this victory for Texas cities," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner wrote in a statement. "HB 2127 was a power grab by the Legislature and an unwarranted and unconstitutional intrusion into local power granted to Houston and other home-rule cities by the Texas Constitution."

The Office of the Attorney General has appealed Gamble's decision, according to Paige Willey, director of communications for the Office of the Attorney General.

"While the judge declared HB 2127 unconstitutional, she did not enjoin enforcement of the law by Texans who are harmed by local ordinances, which HB 2127 preempts," Willey wrote to Insider. "The Office of the Attorney General has also immediately appealed because the ruling is incorrect. This will stay the effect of the court's declaration pending appeal. As a result, HB 2127 will go into effect on September 1."

The law even prevented ordinances that mandated things like water breaks for construction workers, earning it the nickname "the law that kills." Texas saw protests from construction workers and their allies who said that an end to local water break mandates would result in more incidents of heat-related illness and death.

"This is a HUGE win for the working people of Texas, local govs, and communities across our state," the Texas AFL-CIO posted in response to the decision. "While we expect an appeal, it remains clear this law is an unacceptable infringement on the rights of Texans and cities."

WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services is formally recommending that the Drug Enforcement Administration ease government restrictions on marijuana, which remains illegal at the federal level despite more than 40 states allowing its use in some form.

The move comes 11 months after President Joe Biden ordered the top health agency to conduct a review of the drug. The recommendation is to move marijuana from what’s known as a Schedule I drug to Schedule III, under the Controlled Substances Act.

In the eyes of the DEA, cannabis is in the same category as other Schedule I drugs like heroin and LSD, meaning it’s considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.

A spokesperson for HHS said it has “expeditiously” responded to the directive in providing its recommendation to the DEA on Tuesday.

If the DEA were to reschedule cannabis to Schedule III, it would most notably eliminate an IRS code intended to prevent drug dealers from claiming tax deductions for business expenses.

That alone could save the marijuana industry at least $100 million, and small business owners who spoke to NBC News said the inability to deduct what would otherwise be ordinary business expenses is their single biggest financial burden.

Now that HHS has made its recommendation, all eyes are on the DEA, which has the ultimate authority on scheduling substances.

The Biden administration had hoped to announce the rescheduling of the drug sometime in the fall, around the one-year mark of the president's request for the review, according to five sources familiar with planning. It's not yet clear how long the DEA’s public review process will take.

The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Asked about the recommendation during a news briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the review “is an independent process” that is led by HHS and the Department of Justice, adding that she would not comment on where Biden currently stands on the issue of decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level.

Reaction to the HHS recommendation has been largely positive on Capitol Hill. In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised HHS as having done “the right thing” and urged the DEA to “quickly follow through on this important step to greatly reduce the harm caused by draconian marijuana laws.” Schumer, D-N.Y., said “there is much more that needs to be done legislatively to end the federal prohibition on cannabis and roll back the War on Drugs.”

Marijuana legalization advocates see this initial step as significant in and of itself: For the first time, the federal government is formally recognizing cannabis’ medical contributions.

The Cannabis Industry Association on Wednesday said that while the recommended reclassification would be historic, more should be done to align federal law with states where marijuana is legal. “The only way to fully resolve the myriad of issues stemming from the federal conflict with state law is to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and regulate the product in a manner similar to alcohol,” said CEO Aaron Smith in a statement.

Easing federal marijuana restrictions is also a political issue that both parties hope to capitalize on ahead of next year's presidential election, as polls have indicated a majority of Americans support legalization.

Some Republicans, including Florida Reps. Matt Gaetz, Greg Steube and Brian Mast have publicly called on the drug to be rescheduled and urged the Biden administration to prioritize the effort. But on the presidential campaign trail, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis doubled down this week on his opposition to marijuana decriminalization and legalization, despite voters in his state legalizing medical use of the drug last year. The Florida Supreme Court is now considering whether a cannabis legalization initiative will appear on the ballot in 2024.

Separately, there is an ongoing bipartisan effort in Congress that would make it easier for financial institutions to offer banking services to legal cannabis companies.

Schumer has said that getting the legislation, known as the SAFE Banking Act, across the finish line will be a “top priority” when the Senate returns in September. But a looming government shutdown could complicate that effort, even as lawmakers behind the bill have worked to break an impasse over the August recess.

A federal judge has determined Rudy Giuliani forfeits the defamation lawsuit from two Georgia election workers against him, a decision that could lead to significant penalties for the former Donald Trump attorney.

In court in recent weeks, Giuliani said he could no longer contest that he made false and defamatory statements about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss – who are only one group of plaintiffs suing him for defamation related to his work for Trump after the 2020 election.

Giuliani said he struggled to maintain his own access to his electronic records – partly because of the cost – and didn’t adequately respond to subpoenas for information from Moss and Freeman as the case moved forward.

“Perhaps he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case,” Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court in Washington, DC, wrote Wednesday. “Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”

The judge, in ruling Wednesday against Giuliani, noted that the election workers could try to show his false claims about the 2020 election were intended, in some part, to enrich himself, an argument that may come up at the damages trial. Moss and Freeman are asking for unspecified damages after they say they suffered emotional and reputational harm, as well as having their safety put in danger, after Giuliani singled them out when he made false claims of ballot tampering in Georgia after the 2020 election.

A trial to determine the amount of damages for which Giuliani will be held liable will be set for later this year or early 2024, Howell said on Wednesday.

The damages could amount to thousands if not millions of dollars.

Giuliani has already been sanctioned almost $90,000 for Freeman and Moss’ attorneys’ fees in the case, and Howell says the former New York mayor may be saddled with additional similar sanctions.

Giuliani has been struggling financially, buried under 2020 election legal proceedings, a new criminal case against him in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the election and other matters. He has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges in Georgia and has been released from jail on bond.

In a statement, Moss and Freeman expressed gratitude for Howell’s ruling.

“What we went through after the 2020 election was a living nightmare,” the pair said. “Rudy Giuliani helped unleash a wave of hatred and threats we never could have imagined. It cost us our sense of security and our freedom to go about our lives. Nothing can restore all we lost, but today’s ruling is yet another neutral finding that has confirmed what we have known all along: that there was never any truth to any of the accusations about us and that we did nothing wrong.”

The pair concluded, “The fight to rebuild our reputations and to repair the damage to our lives is not over.”

Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that Howell’s decision was “a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment.” Goodman added that Giuliani was “wrongly accused” of failing to preserve his own records and that he wanted Howell’s decision to be reversed.

Giuliani had only turned over fewer than 200 relevant documents, a single page of communications, a few legal responses, a “sliver” of needed financial documents and “blobs of indecipherable data,” Howell wrote.

Giuliani had claimed that the FBI seizure of his electronic devices years ago had complicated his ability to access his records and that he had struggled under pricey legal fees. But Howell said he could have taken steps at an earlier point to keep his records in case litigation arose in the future.

The judge also noted that while Giuliani complained to the court that he was buried in litigation costs, he was able to get Trump’s reimbursement for his electronic legal debts, listed his Manhattan co-op apartment for $6.5 million and traveled on a private plane to report to jail for processing in Fulton County, Georgia, last week.

Howell noted that Giuliani’s decades of experience as a lawyer, including as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, underscored his “lackluster preservation efforts.”

“Giuliani has submitted declarations with concessions turned slippery on scrutiny and excuses designed to shroud the insufficiency of his discovery compliance. The bottom line is that Giuliani has refused to comply with his discovery obligations and thwarted plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss’s procedural rights to obtain any meaningful discovery in this case,” Howell wrote in a 57-page opinion ruling.

“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law, this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention.”

Late last month, Giuliani conceded that he made defamatory statements about Freeman and Moss – who are but one of several groups suing Giuliani for defamation related to his work for Trump after the 2020 election – and that he didn’t contest their accusations that he had smeared them after the 2020 election.

Giuliani’s statements about them, which Freeman and Moss say are false, included calling them ballot-stuffing criminal conspirators. Giuliani also drew attention to a video of them after the election, which was first posted by the Trump campaign and showed part of a security tape of ballot counting in Atlanta. On social media, his podcast and other broadcasts, Giuliani said the video showed suitcases filled with ballots, when it did not capture anything but normal ballot processing, according to the defamation lawsuit and a state investigation.

Georgia election officials have debunked Giuliani’s accusations of fraud during the ballot counting.

The mother-daughter duo has been candid about how their lives were impacted by Trump and Giuliani’s claims that they were guilty of election fraud.

“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” Freeman said last year in video testimony to the House select committee that investigated the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.

Moss said her privacy was destroyed when she learned that Giuliani had accused her mother, Freeman, of passing some kind of USB drive to her like “vials of cocaine or heroin” as part of an elaborate vote-stealing scheme, she said. In reality, the object in question was a ginger mint. In his controversial call when he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find votes to help him overturn his 2020 loss, Trump attacked Moss 18 times, and the former president called Freeman a “professional vote scammer” and a “hustler.”

“I felt horrible. I felt like it was all my fault,” Moss said during her testimony last year. “I just felt like it was, it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.”

She added that she and her mother were afraid to go outside or to the supermarket after getting threats “wishing death upon me, telling me that, you know, I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like – ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”

During Giuliani’s disinformation campaign about the vote in Georgia, the FBI recommended Freeman leave her home for her own safety, according to the lawsuit.

You know how one of the common symptoms of fascism is that they will describe their enemies as both weak and strong.
What would you call someone that describes themselves as both weak and strong?

For example "vote for me and I can definitely protect reproductive rights but actually bureaucracy prevents me from stopping the people trying to knock down reproductive rights."

#politics

After urging by conservative talk-show host Charlie Kirk during his podcast on Monday, supporters of the former president inundated New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan’s office with phone calls to pressure Scanlan to keep the GOP front-runner’s name on the ballot for New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, which is less than five months away.

In a joint statement Tuesday, Scanlan and Attorney General John M. Formella said any assertion or implication that Scanlan had pursued a particular course of action with regard to Trump’s eligibility is “misinformation.” Scanlan’s office has asked for legal advice, and Formella’s office is “carefully reviewing the legal issues involved,” but neither has taken a position on this matter, they said.

They did not respond to questions about [John] Castro’s newly filed lawsuit.

Castro, 39, an attorney and entrepreneur who ran for the US House and Senate in 2020 and 2022, didn’t qualify for the first GOP presidential debate, and he told the Globe he doesn’t intend to appear on the ballot for the presidential contest in all 50 states. He’s just targeting swing states and plans to file self-funded lawsuits in several more states by the end of the week, he said. He’s representing himself.

“My primary goal,” he said, “is to deny Trump a second term.”

Castro also filed a federal lawsuit in Florida in January seeking to have Trump disqualified. A judge dismissed that suit in June for lack of legal standing and ripeness, so Castro appealed to the 11th Circuit and has asked the US Supreme Court to rule that he has standing to sue.

Castro claims that he and Trump are competing for the same political position and, therefore, competing for votes and fundraising dollars. That’s the basis for his argument that he himself suffers harm if Trump is allowed to keep competing for the GOP’s 2024 nomination.

The gist of Castro’s argument is one that some legal scholars have suggested is plausible. Northwestern University law professor Steven G. Calabresi recently argued that another Republican presidential candidate, former Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, is legally injured by Trump’s candidacy and should sue to boot Trump’s name from the ballot.

Calabresi told the Globe that he figures any candidate who qualifies for the ballot has standing to sue. Ultimately, that question of standing will need to be decided by the US Supreme Court, he said. “I hope that this guy will pursue it to that level,” he added.

Calabresi, who describes himself as a conservative Republican, worked in President Ronald Reagan’s White House and said he has voted for Republican presidential candidates every four years since, with the exception of 2020. Calabresi said he voted for Trump in 2016, then abstained in 2020 because Trump had suggested postponing the election.

”In an ideal world,” Calabresi said, “I think that Trump’s second impeachment should have proceeded and he should have been disqualified from holding office again in the future at that time.”

At this point, Calabresi said he sees valid constitutional arguments both to deem Trump ineligible for the ballot and to spare Trump from prosecution for his alleged crimes.

”My desire is that he not be on the ballot and that he not be criminally punished,” he said. “I don’t want to see the country go down that road.”

Others have argued this legal theory contradicts relevant precedent and represents nothing more than a political attack.

While some see the 14th Amendment as a tool to defend democratic norms, the former president’s supporters see this untested legal theory as an anti-democratic cudgel designed to override their political will. Trump faces four criminal indictments, including two related to his efforts to cling to power after his 2020 electoral defeat.

“The people who are pushing this political attack on President Trump are stretching the law beyond recognition much like the political prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and D.C.,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung. “There is no legal basis for this effort except in the minds of those who are pushing it.”

In his New Hampshire lawsuit, Castro has asked a judge to issue an injunction to block Scanlan from accepting or processing Trump’s declaration of candidacy and any other documentation the former president submits to appear on the state’s ballot.

Scanlan, a Republican, told the Globe last week that he was aware of the legal theory and the prospect of litigation. He said he was seeking legal advice, both from in-house counsel and Formella’s office, to ensure that any decision he makes is done with a clear understanding of the arguments at play.

Scanlan said the violence that unfolded Jan. 6 should never have happened, but he suggested that he’s not well-situated to determine whether those events trigger the 14th Amendment.

“I don’t know that I’m really qualified to say whether that was an ‘insurrection’ or not. I think that is for the courts to decide,” he said.

Castro isn’t the only person pushing for Scanlan to deem Trump ineligible in New Hampshire. From Aug. 1 to Aug. 24, more than two dozen people contacted Scanlan’s office to urge him to take action against Trump, according to communications released to the Globe in response to a public records request.

Bryant “Corky” Messner, who was the GOP’s 2020 nominee for US Senate, has also said he’s thinking about filing a lawsuit to block Trump from the New Hampshire ballot. Messner, who met with Scanlan on Friday to convey his concerns, said he would consider filing suit on the basis that he is a New Hampshire voter harmed by Trump’s candidacy.

Messner told the Globe on Tuesday that, as far as his own potential litigation is concerned, the dispute over Trump’s ballot eligibility in New Hampshire is not yet ripe for judicial review. He declined to comment on Castro’s lawsuit.

New Hampshire GOP Chairman Chris Ager said Monday that he’s confident Scanlan and Formella won’t block any otherwise qualified candidate from the state’s ballot.

“Let voters decide the nominee, not a weaponized federal justice system using tortured logic,” Ager said.

Both of the declared candidates in the GOP’s 2024 gubernatorial contest in New Hampshire have called for the state to allow the presidential primary to play out.

“We must leave it up to the voters to decide our elections at the ballot box,” said former US senator Kelly Ayotte, who appears to be a very early favorite for the Republican nomination.

Chuck Morse, a former New Hampshire Senate president who’s competing with Ayotte, launched a petition demanding that Trump and all candidates have ballot access in New Hampshire. Trump “absolutely belongs” on the first-in-the-nation primary ballot, he said.

With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump.

Facebook said Tuesday it has identified a sprawling online propaganda effort: a pro-China campaign that had a presence on more than 50 websites.

The campaign “appears to be the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world,” Meta said in a report. The researchers said the broadly coordinated postings of pro-China images, videos, comments and audio files were part of a yearslong operation that researchers had previously dubbed “Spamouflage.”

The findings underscore the potential for internet propaganda campaigns to attempt to exploit internet platforms to influence the U.S. election in 2024. Since 2016, Russia, Iran and to a lesser extent China have all launched covert online efforts to influence U.S. voters.

Despite its scope, the campaign received little engagement and rarely gained much traction beyond its initial posts. Online propaganda campaigns have struggled to replicate the success of early influence efforts, such as Russia’s efforts to sow discord ahead of the 2016 election.

The content mostly consisted of positive commentary about China, defense of its policies, and criticism of the U.S. and other Western countries, the report said.

Meta said it took down 7,704 Facebook accounts and 954 pages linked to the campaign, though much of the content on other websites is still accessible.

In a call Monday previewing the report, Ben Nimmo, Facebook’s global threat intelligence lead, said those posting the material appeared to be more intent on filling quotas than deeply convincing users to China’s views.

“We saw hundreds of accounts on dozens of platforms, making what were likely meant to be personal comments, but it was the same comment from many different accounts day after day, as if they were copy-pasting from a list or a spreadsheet,” Nimmo said. “Some of them even put numbers in front of these apparently personal comments, as if they’ve copied them from a numbered list and forgotten to proofread them before they posted.”

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Despite the campaign’s apparent ineffectiveness, it’s notable for the sheer number of websites on which its operators tried to share the material. It includes TikTok, the video-sharing site Vimeo, LiveJournal, Reddit, Medium, Tumblr and the audio platform SoundCloud.

A Reddit spokesperson said in an email that the company “regularly” bans accounts tied to Spamouflage.

TikTok, Vimeo, Medium, Tumblr and SoundCloud didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment. LiveJournal could not be reached for comment.

The material was often remarkably unconvincing, Nimmo said.

“There was one case where the operation replied to a question on Quora, which was about losing belly fat in English, with a post in Chinese about why Taiwan should surrender. So it doesn’t look like this has been a high-precision effort, or heavily focused on actually attracting a real audience,” he said.

Quora didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.

Link to Adversarial Threat Report mentioned in the article - PDF on Facebook

An elected Democratic prosecutor whose removal Ron DeSantis boasted about during the first Republican presidential debate said the hard-right Florida governor and his allies ousted her because she was “prosecuting their cops”.

Law enforcement agencies in central Florida were “all working against me”, Monique Worrell told the Daily Beast, “because I was prosecuting their cops, the ones who used to do things and get away with them”.

She added: “They thought that I was overly critical of law enforcement and didn’t do anything against ‘real criminals’. Apparently there’s a difference between citizens who commit crimes and cops who commit crimes.”

DeSantis has long polled second to Donald Trump in national and key state surveys of the Republican primary but he remains far behind, most observers saying his campaign is stalling.

In Florida, he has removed two elected Democratic prosecutors: Andrew Warren of Hillsborough county in August 2022 and Worrell earlier this month.

Warren said he would not enforce an abortion ban signed by the governor. The prosecutor sued to regain his job but has so far failed, even though a judge found DeSantis to be in the wrong.

Worrell previously responded to her removal by calling DeSantis a “weak dictator” seeking to create a “smokescreen for [a] failing and disastrous presidential campaign”.

In his debate-stage boast in Wisconsin last week, DeSantis blamed “hollowed-out cities … a symptom of America’s decline” on “radical leftwing district attorneys [who] say they’re not going to prosecute crimes they disagree with”.

“There’s one guy in this entire country that’s ever done anything about that,” he said. “Me, when we had two of these district attorneys in Florida … who said they wouldn’t do their job, I removed them from their post. They are gone and as president we are going to go after all of these people.”

Speaking to the Beast, in a report published on Monday, Worrell said an “ambush” by the governor’s law enforcement allies preceded the decision to fire her, including a recorded call in which the Orlando county sheriff complained about a failure to jail a known gang member who was caught with a gun.

Worrell told the site: “They took him into custody – without a warrant. Went into his pants pocket – without a warrant. Clicked key fob – without warrant. Went in [to his car] – without warrant.

“There’s this little thing called ‘unreasonable search and seizure’ and you can’t get evidence without a warrant. We were unable to go forward with charges because it was an illegal search and seizure. And we had lots of communication with the sheriff’s office about this case, trying to salvage the case.

“As the state attorney, we’re not here to rubber-stamp what the sheriff’s office does. We can’t condone that.”

Worrell also told the Beast that at the time she was fired, for what DeSantis called “neglect of duty and incompetence”, her team was uncovering “all sorts of illegal activity” in an investigation of the Osceola county sheriff.

Saying she would soon decide whether to sue to get her job back, Worrell also said she was planning to run for re-election next year – a race which would likely pit her against DeSantis’s hand-picked replacement.

PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed House Bill 2717 which will provide the state’s 911 operators unlimited mental health services.

Operators can use services without the fear of running out of sessions or having to pay for extra sessions out of pocket.

The signing of the bill gives 911 operators the same mental health benefits as police officers and firefighters.

“To say the least, our 911 dispatchers have the grave responsibility of keeping our neighbors and communities safe,” Gov. Hobbs said in a press release.

“During those phone calls, they can experience extremely traumatic situations that they take home with them.”

At a press conference Friday, Hobbs expressed the importance of having access to the services that would entice people interested in the field.

“We must give them the tools. They need to thrive outside of the workplace as well. Especially in this field, that includes the necessary health care services that promote emotional and mental well-being of our dispatchers,” Hobbs said.
Advocating for mental health support

At the press conference, Frank Piccioli, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local with the city of Phoenix and Arizona EMS Workers United, expressed that the decisions made by 911 dispatchers bear on their souls when dealing with issues of life and death.

“These needed resources would help deal with the PTSD issues that are so prevalent in our group,” Piccioli said at the press conference. “These people are truly the first of the First Responders.”

Melody Hernandez, Valley paramedic and bill sponsor, echoed Piccioli’s sentiments.

“They’re the ones who answer the calls to begin with, and after they work through the screaming and the anxiety and the pressure that they face from the community that they are speaking to,” Hernandez said at the press conference.

“They are oftentimes, once they leave the call, they are left with the pain of those calls, they’re left with the memories of those calls and like many of them, I am also diagnosed with PTSD and it is one of the most difficult diseases to heal from to deal with on a daily basis.”

Hernandez went on to say the signing of the bill was the most important signature they could have gotten in the legislature.

MADISON, Wis. — Standing in the marble-lined rotunda of the state capitol earlier this month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s incoming justice raised her right hand, swore to carry out her job “faithfully and impartially” and launched a new, liberal era on a powerful court long dominated by conservatives.

The fallout was immediate.

Within days, the new majority stripped duties from the court’s conservative chief justice and fired its administrative director, a conservative former judge who once ran for the court. The abrupt changes prompted the chief justice to accuse her liberal colleagues of engaging in “nothing short of a coup.” Before long, Republican lawmakers threatened to impeach the court’s newest member.

Liberal groups, long accustomed to seeing the court as hostile terrain, quickly maneuvered for potential victories on a string of major issues. They filed lawsuits to try to redraw the state’s legislative districts, which heavily favor Republicans. And the Democratic attorney general sought to speed up a case challenging a 19th-century law that has kept doctors from providing abortions in Wisconsin.

“It’s an absolute seismic shift in Wisconsin policy and politics,” said C.J. Szafir, the chief executive of the conservative, Wisconsin-based Institute for Reforming Government. “We’re about to usher in a very progressive state Supreme Court, the likes that we have not seen in quite some time. And it’s really going to change how everything operates.”

The turnaround on the Wisconsin court is the result of an April election that became the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with campaigns and interest groups spending more than $50 million.

At stake in that race, with the retirement of a conservative justice who held a decisive vote on a 4-3 court, was the question of who would make crucial rulings in a swing state that could decide the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Conservatives had controlled the court for 15 years, during which they upheld a voter ID law, approved limits on collective bargaining for public workers, banned absentee ballot drop boxes and shut down a wide-ranging campaign finance investigation into Republicans.

Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, won by 11 points and flipped control of the court to give liberals a 4-3 majority when she was sworn in on Aug. 1. Protasiewicz, who declined interview requests, spoke openly during her campaign about her support for abortion rights and opposition to what she called “rigged” maps that have given Republicans large majorities in the state legislature. Political strategists said her blunt style helped her win even as court observers fretted that she was making judges look like politicians instead of evenhanded referees.

The tensions surrounding the Wisconsin court reflect the state’s political importance nationally and the increasingly partisan nature of a system in which candidates who vow to be impartial arbiters of the law are chosen by voters in heated political campaigns. Justices are directly elected by voters in 21 states and they must stand for retention elections after being appointed in another 17.

Across the country, deadlocked statehouses and all-or-nothing politics have given state supreme courts more power and often put them in charge of determining election outcomes and abortion policies. The changeover on the Wisconsin Supreme Court comes less than a year after conservatives took over the top court in North Carolina and strengthened their hold on the one in Ohio. In North Carolina, the new majority acted swiftly, handing Republicans victories by reversing decisions the court had made just months earlier on voter ID and redistricting.

Conservatives for decades had the upper hand in supreme court races in key states by fielding judges and prosecutors as candidates, sharpening tough-on-crime messages and securing the support of deep-pocketed groups aligned with Republicans. But in recent years, liberals in Wisconsin have recruited candidates with similar backgrounds and seized on popular political themes. The state Democratic Party, meanwhile, has poured millions of dollars into what are ostensibly nonpartisan races.

The strategy culminated in Protasiewicz’s victory and elicited cheers from liberals across the country. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Protasiewicz would “protect democracy as the state’s newest Supreme Court justice.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hailed her victory as a “HUGE night for the progressive movement.” And Vice President Harris said Wisconsin voters had “stood up for abortion rights” by electing Protasiewicz.

Conservative attorneys and groups are strategizing ways to keep issues important to them away from the justices — and calling for amending the state constitution to lock in their past victories.

“I think one of the best ways that conservatives can guard against a progressive state Supreme Court is to take matters into their own hands,” said Szafir, of the Institute for Reforming Government. “We need to be very crystal clear that conservative reforms need to be spelled out in the state constitution to prevent the potentially new activist court from trying to overturn them.”

Liberals have gone on offense. One group on the left filed a lawsuit over voting rules even before Protasiewicz was sworn in and two sets of Democratic voters filed a pair of redistricting cases within days of her taking office. A week later, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) asked a trial judge to quickly rule on the abortion rights lawsuit in a move that could get the case to the high court faster. And liberal attorneys in the coming months and years could file lawsuits over voter ID, school vouchers, union rights and a 2018 law that limited the powers of Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers (D).

The new liberal majority in Wisconsin consists of four women — one who has been on the court for 28 years and three who joined it over the past five years after serving as prosecutors and trial judges. Over the years, the liberals have honed their skills at writing dissents, knowing that they could do little more than point out what they consider the flaws of the majority. The conservative bloc includes one justice who occasionally votes with the liberals, such as when he joined them in a 4-3 opinion to reject Donald Trump’s request to overturn his presidential loss in the state. The other conservatives sided with Trump.

The new court has not yet heard a case together — but the tension between justices has already exploded into public view. In a routine scheduling order in the redistricting cases, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote a seething dissent that contended Protasiewicz’s campaign comments about “rigged” maps showed the liberals had already made up their minds to “bestow an electoral advantage for Democrat candidates.”

“‘Rigged’ is indeed an apt description — for this case,” she wrote.

Within days of taking over, the liberals established a committee of three justices that will take on many of the duties that had belonged to Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, a conservative. “It’s nothing short of a coup, really,” Ziegler told a conservative radio host.

In an interview with The Washington Post, she said she recognizes the liberal justices have “a ton of power” to implement changes she does not like but argued they had usurped her authority by taking away so many of her responsibilities. She downplayed the possibility of suing her colleagues but didn’t rule it out.

“I think legal action is not good for the court,” she said. “Honestly, I’m sad that it’s even come to the point where that might be discussed.”

For decades, the most senior member of the court served as chief justice, and under that system a liberal chief justice for years presided over a conservative court. In response, Republican lawmakers scheduled a ballot measure to change the state constitution and voters in 2015 approved allowing the justices to decide who would serve as chief justice. Conservatives on the court chose one of their own to serve in that post shortly after voters signed off on changing the rules.

Ziegler has served as chief justice since 2021 and was selected by her peers for a second two-year term this spring, just before the liberals took over. Chief justices in Wisconsin don’t assign who writes decisions but are responsible for overseeing the state’s judicial system and making certain appointments. Ziegler argues the liberals violated the state constitution by taking away much of her power, while the liberals say they were free to act because the state constitution says the chief justice must operate “pursuant to procedures adopted by the supreme court.”

The justices are slated to discuss the changes as a group next month. Justice Rebecca Dallet, a liberal, said that’s the best way to handle their differences. “It is deeply inappropriate for the Chief Justice to continue to refuse to engage with her colleagues, but instead to publicly litigate these issues,” she said in a written statement.

Ziegler also bristled at the liberals’ decision to fire Randy Koschnick, who had served as the director of state courts since 2017. Ziegler called the move a “raw exercise of overreaching power.”

Koschnick — a conservative who made an unsuccessful run for state Supreme Court in 2009 — recently filed ethics complaints against the four liberal justices. In an appearance on a conservative radio show, he called one justice a “Marxist in a black robe,” accused the liberals of “taking a wrecking ball” to constitutional governance and discussed impeaching the liberals.

“Impeachment, I think, fits squarely,” he said. “Here you have officers of the court who’ve taken an oath to uphold the constitution blatantly violate the constitution three times in three days, and in my view that’s grounds for impeachment.”

He later told The Post he was not advocating for impeachment, but state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) soon after said on a conservative radio show that he was consulting a constitutional scholar and would consider impeaching Protasiewicz if she did not step aside from cases she had commented on. Republicans for months have contended Protasiewicz must not participate in the cases on abortion and redistricting because of what she said on the campaign trail.

“I want to look and see: Does she recuse herself on cases where she has prejudged?” Vos said. “That to me is a serious offense.”

Soon afterward, Vos and other Republican lawmakers filed a motion seeking to push Protasiewicz off the redistricting cases because of her campaign comments and the $10 million she received from the state Democratic Party. The decision on whether to step aside is up to Protasiewicz because conservatives on the court in 2011 issued a 4-3 decision that found justices cannot force one another off cases. If Protasiewicz remains on the case, the Republicans could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to remove her from it for having a conflict of interest. Protasiewicz has not signaled what she will do.

Protasiewicz, like the other liberals on the court, has declined to discuss the impeachment threats, but their allies have rallied behind the liberals. State Sen. Kelda Roys (D) said impeachment proceedings would amount to a norm-shattering effort “to try to overturn the clear will of the voters.” She said conservatives are lashing out because they know they are going to lose high-profile cases.

“They can’t stand it,” she said. “They’re mad. It sucks to lose elections, and I say that with all sincerity. It’s not fun to lose, and they haven’t had to lose that much.”

In Wisconsin, justices can be impeached by a simple majority in the state Assembly and can be removed from office by a two-thirds majority in the state Senate if lawmakers find the justices committed crimes or engaged in corruption. Republicans have those margins in the legislature, but if they remove justices the Democratic governor could name replacements who are just as liberal.

If they are impeached, justices must stop performing their duties immediately — before the state Senate decides whether to convict them. That means the Republican lawmakers could sideline the liberals without removing them. In such a scenario, the liberals would still hold office but have no powers.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox, a conservative, said he thought the liberals were out of line and feared their actions were the outgrowth of increasingly partisan court races.

“The main thing that concerns me is the politicization of this court,” he said. “Both sides. That’s distressful to me because I tried as a justice when I was here to be … evenhanded and fair-minded. And I don’t think they’re going to have that anymore.”

Tension is nothing new on this court. Twelve years ago, a conservative justice during an argument placed his hands on the neck of a liberal justice in front of other members of the court. No criminal charges were issued and a judicial ethics complaint fizzled out when most of the justices said they could not hear the case because they were witnesses. The conservative justice retired in 2016.

This month at Protasiewicz’s swearing-in ceremony — held just hours before the justices began publicly criticizing one another — former Justice Janine Geske said disputes and controversies should be expected on a court of seven members. Geske, who was appointed to the court by a Republican governor to fill a vacancy in 1993, compared meetings of the justices to “a Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of strangers and some newly acquired in-laws and then asking everyone how they feel about the most controversial issue you could think of.”

Geske, who is a Marquette University law professor, in an interview said the change in the court’s majority does not mean liberals can count on victories in every case. While campaigns for the court have become highly political, justices are charged with interpreting state laws regardless of their personal views.

“My experience is she’s really very down-to-earth, very pragmatic,” Geske said of Protasiewicz. “There are going to be surprises on some of the cases, I think. … There are going to be some people that are unhappy sometimes. She is not going to be the liberal Democrat on each case.”

Even before Protasiewicz was sworn in, though, her conservative colleagues were bracing for the change. In a 4-3 administrative ruling, the court in July declined to approve a program that would have given continuing legal education credits to lawyers who take a class in diversity, equity and inclusion. Bradley, the conservative justice most vocally critical of the liberals, predicted the decision would not hold for long, writing, “The new majority will reverse this court’s order at its first opportunity.”

Prosecutors in Arizona are “aggressively” ramping up their criminal probe into the 2020 fake electors plot aimed at keeping then-President Donald Trump in power. They’re not just looking at the fake electors, though. Rudy Giuliani is also now high on their list.

Two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that in the past several weeks, state prosecutors have been asking questions about the former New York mayor who became a ringleader in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Investigators assigned to the case by Arizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes have recently asked potential witnesses and other individuals specific questions not only about Giuliani’s behind-the-scenes conduct, but that of other key Trump lieutenants at the time, as well.

Prosecutors appear particularly interested in a number of notable meetings and phone calls, including a late November 2020 meeting with members of Arizona’s state legislature convened by the Trump legal team, which aired bogus claims of voter fraud and lobbied lawmakers to “take over” the state’s selection of electors, the sources say.

State investigators have also at times inquired about Trump’s level of personal involvement in the Arizona-focused pressure campaign, one of the people with knowledge of the situation says. The campaign was part of a multi-state fake elector scheme, which along with other aspects of Trump’s crusade to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate 2020 victory has figured prominently into multiple federal and state-level criminal probes.

Giuliani’s attorney and a Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on this story. The Arizona attorney general’s office declined to comment.

Arizona law enforcement officials have also been looking into the activities of former Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward and her role as a fake elector. As Rolling Stone reported last week, prosecutors have asked possible witnesses about a December 2020 signing ceremony where Ward and 10 other Republicans signed documents falsely attesting to be Arizona’s legitimate electors.

Arizona’s attorney general has publicly referred to the case as an investigation into “fake electors,” but the questions about Giuliani suggest that investigators may be interested in probing pro-Trump figures who were higher up on the food chain in addition to the 11 Republicans who falsely claimed to be the state’s legitimate electors.

In public comments following the Fulton County, Georgia, indictment of Trump and his associates earlier this month, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes called for patience, saying “we are doing a thorough and professional investigation and we’re going to do it on our timetable as justice demands.”

At this early stage in the investigation, it remains unclear whether prosecutors will decide to file any charges. It’s even less clear whether the state attorney general’s office intends to mount as aggressive and far-reaching an investigation as Fulton County’s Fani Willis, who indicted Trump alongside 18 other defendants — including Giuliani — on election-related conspiracy charges. (It was former President Trump’s historic fourth indictment of the year.)

Giuliani convened the meeting of 15 state legislators at the Hyatt Regency in Phoenix in late November 2020, casting it as a “hearing” of the state’s legislature despite its unofficial status. The meeting appeared to be part of the Trump campaign’s pressure campaign to prevent the state from certifying Biden’s win. Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey certified the state’s legitimate electors the same day.

President Trump called into the meeting and blasted Ducey, who he said “couldn’t [certify the electoral count] fast enough,” warning that “Arizona will not forget what Ducey just did.” Giuliani meanwhile urged the assembled lawmakers to “take over the conduct of this election because it’s being conducted irresponsibly and unfairly,” according to the House January 6 Committee’s final report.

Giuliani had initially pressed Rusty Bowers, then Arizona’s Republican House speaker, during a phone call with Trump to hold an official legislative hearing. But Bowers refused, testifying later that he feared an official hearing would create a “circus” atmosphere and make him a “pawn.”

Last week, Bowers declined to answer questions about the Arizona investigation and related events, simply telling Rolling Stone: “I am under counsel to not discuss anything at this time, so I must [decline to comment].”

Bowers told the January 6 Committee that Giuliani met with both him and other Arizona legislators after the Phoenix conference, where they “aggressively questioned” the two over their claims of thousands of dead and undocumented voters. Giuliani allegedly asked Bowers and other state legislators to help in recalling the state’s electors for Biden, which the state had certified that same day. Bowers refused.

“We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,” Giuliani said, according to Bowers.

Users on far-right online forums are publishing private information about members of the Georgia grand jury that indicted former president Donald Trump and 18 of his allies in a sweeping criminal case focused on alleged 2020 election interference earlier this month, leading to jurors receiving threats online.

The Fulton County Sheriff's office announced last week that they were working on tracking down where the threats were coming from and were coordinating with "law enforcement partners to respond quickly to any credible threat and to ensure the safety of those individuals who carried out their civic duty."

After the release of the indictment and the grand jurors' names, users on far-right message boards began sharing their addresses, identities, social media accounts and other information targeting the jurors, according to Media Matters.

"It's a serious problem," Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told Salon. "These grand jurors' names and other personal information have been linked on dangerous sites, in particular 4chan. That's where multiple terrorist manifestos have been posted and the site is filled with white supremacists and other extremists."

On a forum that has served as a hub for "Q," the central figure of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a user shared the names of the jurors alongside their addresses. Meanwhile, on another platform where the QAnon conspiracy theory originated, a user appeared to make a veiled threat about following these individuals to their residences and photographic their faces, Media Matters found.

Some users also made explicit threats aimed at the jurors on these message boards. One user referred to the grand jurors' names as a "hit list," prompting another user to reply with, "Based. Godspeed anons, you have all the long range rifles in the world."

In addition to facing online harassment, jurors are at risk of several other dangers — varying from receiving menacing phone calls to having people show up at their houses to swatting and even receiving death threats, Beirich said.

"We've seen this in other cases where people have been targeted by far-right figures," she added. "Their families can also be targeted. It can be a dangerous and scary situation. We can never forget the two poll workers in Georgia that Trump targeted and who had to go into hiding afterward."

After Trump posted on his social media website Truth Social that authorities were going "after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!" — Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan research group founded by Dan Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, pointed out that Trump supporters were employing the term "rigger" as a substitute for a racial slur in their online posts.

"There is a lot of anger out there on the part of pro-Trump actors and given the harassment that is faced by public officials lately, the same could happen here," Beirich said. "It's unfortunate Georgia law doesn't provide any protections. These people are doing their civil duty; they shouldn't have to face this."

Under Georgia law, the names of grand jurors are included on indictments – a practice aimed at promoting transparency. However, this approach has come under scrutiny given the continuing threats following the recent indictment of Trump and 18 co-defendants.

The only way Georgia or any other state would change the current practice is if there is a widespread outcry over the harassment or if there is actual violence that takes place, said Donald Haider-Markel, a University of Kansas political science professor who studies domestic extremism.

"Much like election workers after the 2020 election, we may begin to see more efforts from potential jurors to ask for an excuse not to serve on a [grand jury], which could also incite a change in the law," he added.

Verbal attacks and harassment have been common for a long time on the extreme right and left, Haider-Markel explained. He pointed to the example of "wanted" posters targeting doctors who perform abortions by the anti-abortion movement since the 1980s.

Individuals would go as far as disclosing the addresses, phone numbers, car descriptions, and license plates of abortion clinic workers, he said.

"This practice won't influence the way most people behave, but it only takes one true believer to use the information to harass and potentially use violence against the target and/or their family members," Haider-Markel said.

The same tactics have been employed by environmental and animal rights activists against those they believe are threatening the environment or exploiting animals, he continued. The Unabomber, for example, selected targets for his mailing campaign in the same manner, going after executives and researchers.

"Many observers believe that these practices have led to violence against abortion clinic workers and that these practices have led to individuals leaving the field," Haider-Markel said. "Certainly, there are plenty of stories about election workers that have left the field since 2020 because of the harassment and threats they faced."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

These message boards have even gone as far as targeting two NBC News reporters who wrote about the grand jury incident. They had their own supposed addresses posted online, according to the Advance Democracy's latest report, Reuters found.

The group also identified posts containing aggressive language targeting Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who brought state racketeering and conspiracy charges against Trump and his allies.

Trump himself has gone after the DA and accused her of prosecutorial misconduct. He also criticized her time in office, asserting that she had been excessively lenient on crime allowing Atlanta "to become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world."

"He makes everything worse because he just doesn't seem to care what effect his words have in inciting his followers," Beirich said. "That has been true since his 2016 campaign. I'm sure Willis is facing a deluge of threats and will need protection."

His verbal attacks against Willis come as no surprise though as the former president has a habit of denigrating prosecutors who are investigating him.

Trump has used Truth Social to harass Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York's Attorney General Letitia James and special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against him.

In a post against Bragg, he warned that there would be "death and destruction" if he was indicted. Shortly after his threat, the Manhattan DA's office received a death threat letter with suspicious powder, which was later determined non-hazardous, with the letter saying: "ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

In other posts, Trump has called Smith "deranged" and accused him of taking away his First Amendment Rights. The former president even called for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan's recusal, saying he was calling for the move "on very powerful grounds."

Chutkan is the federal judge overseeing the criminal case of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Washington DC.

Last week, a Texas woman was arrested and charged with threatening to kill Chutkan, The Associated Press reported. Abigail Jo Shry called the federal courthouse in Washington and left a threatening message.

"You are in our sights, we want to kill you," the documents said.

Despite public officials receiving such threats, the former president has continued his attacks. In some social media posts, he has even warned "If you go after me, I'm coming after you!"

"It's important not to underestimate the chilling effect that personal targeting and online harassment can have on jurors, on voters, on elected officials [and] on community members," Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs at Western States Center — an anti-extremism watchdog, told Salon. "And the publication of personal details, especially physical locations, is a huge risk factor for potential violence."

Schubiner pointed to the examples of mass shooters, who were active in online hate forums prior to their crimes. There's also a "big risk" for the translation of online harassment into direct physical violence, she added.

"Trump's words and his actions have normalized bigotry and harassment, and even political violence for a long time," Schubiner said. "From the beginning of his campaign, he opened the door to normalizing overt bigotry in politics and opened the door for bigoted and anti-democracy groups like the Proud Boys, like the Oath Keepers, to play a much more prominent role in our political system."

Russian intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian operatives and unwitting US and western targets, according to newly declassified US intelligence.

US intelligence agencies believe that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is attempting to influence public policy and public opinion in the West by directing Russian civilians to build relationships with influential US and Western individuals and then disseminate narratives that support Kremlin objectives, obscuring the FSB’s role through layers of ostensibly independent actors.

“These influence operations are designed to be deliberately small scale, the overall goal being US [and] Western persons presenting these ideas, seemingly organic,” a US official authorized to discuss the material told CNN. “The co-optee influence operations are built primarily on personal relationships … they build trust with them and then they can leverage that to covertly push the FSB’s agenda.”

The campaigns have sometimes been effective at planting Russian narratives in the Western press, according to the intelligence. Maxim Grigoriev, who heads a Russian NGO, made multiple speeches to the UN presenting a false study that claimed the humanitarian group the White Helmets – which operates in Syria – was running a black market for human organs and had faked chemical attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with whom Russia is allied. Those claims eventually found their way into a television report on the far-right OANN in the United States, according to open-source materials provided by the official.

CNN has reached out to Grigoriev and OANN.

But the official stressed that the Western voices that eventually became mouthpieces for Russian propaganda were almost certainly unaware of the role they were playing.

“At the end of the day, this unwitting target is disseminating Russian influence operation, Russian propaganda to their target public,” the US official said. “Ultimately, a lot of these are unwitting people — they remain unaware who is essentially seeding these narratives.”

The intelligence provides several examples of Russian civilian “co-optees” doing the bidding of the FSB.

One man, Andrey Stepanenko, founded a media project in 2014 that sponsored journalists from the US and the West to visit eastern Ukraine and learn “the alleged truth” about what was happening in the region. In fact, the FSB directed his efforts and “almost certainly financed the project,” according to the declassified intelligence.

CNN was not able to locate Stepanenko to ask for comment.

The US official also cited Natalia Burlinova, the founder of a Russian NGO who routinely coordinated FSB-funded public diplomacy efforts aimed at influencing Western views. In 2018, she visited, had meetings and hosted events at multiple US think tanks and universities in New York, Boston and Washington – work that was funded by the FSB, according to the intelligence. Her conduct was already public: She was indicted earlier this year on charges of conspiring with an FSB officer to act as an illegal agent of Russia inside the United States, although she remains at liberty in Russia.

CNN has reached out to Burlinova.

The official declined to offer specifics to back up the intelligence community’s assertions that the FSB is funding this kind of operation but noted that once officials were able establish FSB backing, it is easy to trace the narratives they are pushing in open-source materials.

“Once you’re aware of who these people are and their association with the FSB, by nature of what they’re doing, they have very, very public personas,” the official said. “And so I would just say it’s not really difficult to kind of follow the strings.”

The US official declined to say whether Russia has used these same tactics to try to influence US elections.

The FSB does use similar tactics to influence political opinion within Russia, according to the intelligence. In one instance, a Russian media figure named Anton Tsvetkov organized protests outside of embassies in Moscow — including the US Embassy — at the FSB’s behest. The protests pushed Russia’s narrative of the war in Ukraine, “promoting the ‘Ukrainian Nazi’ narrative and blaming the U.S. and its allies for the deaths of children in the Donbass,” while hiding the Russian government’s role, according to the declassified intelligence.

“The purpose of those protests really was … designed to sell it to the Russian people,” the US official said.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution bans anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office.

A Florida lawyer is suing Donald Trump in an attempt to disqualify his current run for president. Lawrence A. Caplan’s Thursday lawsuit claims that the ex-president’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would make him ineligible to run again, thanks to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment—a Civil War-era addition aimed at preventing those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office. “Now given that the facts seem to be crystal clear that Trump was involved to some extent in the insurrection that took place on January 6th, the sole remaining question is whether American jurists who swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution upon their entry to the bench, will choose to follow the letter of the Constitution in this case,” the lawsuit says, also citing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Legal experts say it’s an uphill battle to argue in court, since the amendment has hardly been exercised in modern history. “Realistically, it’s not a Hail Mary, but it’s just tossing the ball up and hoping it lands in the right place,” Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies at Nova Southeastern University, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

archive link to South Florida Sun Sentinel article: https://archive.ph/1BntD

It's a real rogues’ gallery.

Get ready for the flood of kompromat

As Vladimir Putin sits thinking in his bomb-proof office, he may come to regret the fact that the entire world is sure that he ordered the death of the mutinous mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Kremlin is a Camorra, a mafia style parliament, running a gangster operation to fill Putin’s pockets and those of his oligarchs and elites. But as the Japanese found in Burma in 1944, if you prosecute a war with terror you will likely come unstuck against a well led, motivated and moral organisation like General ‘Bill’ Slim’s ‘Forgotten Army’.

Putin may in fact have signed his own death warrant. His fingerprints may not have been on the firing button when Prigozhin’s jet was brought down, and may not have been on the Polonium or Novichok which killed some of his other opponents, but his DNA is all over the orders. He now has two very powerful groups to worry about – quite apart from the International Criminal Court, which no doubt has so much evidence that if he ever gets to the Hague he will never leave.

Firstly, Putin must worry about his oligarchs who have now been holed up in their dachas in Moscow for over 18 months, unable to use their superyachts or villas in the Mediterranean. As their leader is further vilified around the globe over this latest murder, the oligarchs may come to see that their only chance to break out of Russia, now so diminished economically and socially, is to dispose of Putin.

Secondly, the Wagner Group might have lost their ‘cowboy’ leader and his deputy, but they remain a large force of thugs and murderers. Prigozhin was no military commander, but the Wagner Group is the most successful military outfit that Russia has managed to put into the field, no matter that they are paid mercenaries, many of them recruited out of Russian jails. To control such a rabble, you need some very hard ‘lieutenants’ running the show and these men will now be considering the future in Belarus and Africa. How ironic it would be if somebody showered them with riches to go and create mayhem within Russia. My experience of mercenaries is that they are not too picky about whose money they take.

archive link: https://archive.is/mMry3

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

“I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

In one of the largest national crackdowns on fraud targeting federal coronavirus aid, the Justice Department on Wednesday said it had brought 718 law enforcement actions in connection with the alleged theft of more than $836 million.

The vast array of criminal charges and other sanctions — part of a federal sweep conducted over the past three months — reflected the ongoing, costly work in Washington to recover stolen pandemic funds roughly three years after the peak of the public health crisis.

To save an economy in free fall, congressional Democrats and Republicans starting in 2020 adopted a series of coronavirus aid packages totaling roughly $5 trillion. The money aimed to ease the strain on the hospitals and doctors, save cash-starved small businesses from financial ruin and support millions of Americans suddenly without a job.

But the speed at which Washington tried to dole out the funds — combined with decades of state and federal mismanagement — ultimately opened the door for waste, fraud and abuse that law enforcement officials are now beginning to identify.

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it had filed charges or at least launched investigations related to roughly $8.6 billion in alleged coronavirus aid fraud since the start of the pandemic. That included hundreds of new cases, pleas, sentences and other developments secured as part of an enforcement campaign it ramped up from May through July.

Federal prosecutors said in May they indicted 30 individuals believed to be tied to a Milwaukee street gang, alleging they had improperly obtained federal benefits for out-of-work Americans to purchase guns, drugs and jewelry and to “solicit murder for hire.”

U.S. officials said they also took action in July against a New Jersey man accused of filing more than 1,000 false tax returns, allegedly in a bid to claim roughly $124 million in federal tax credits that were supposed to help small businesses retain their workers.

And federal law enforcement announced they brought a civil case that same month against a Maryland man who allegedly bilked $7 million from Medicare — falsely billing the program for coronavirus tests and other procedures that weren’t ordered or, in some cases, were never actually completed.

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the raft of new enforcement “should send a message COVID-19 public health emergency may have ended, but the Justice Department’s work to identify and prosecute those who stole pandemic relief funds is far from over.”

The new push to prosecute fraud comes roughly five months after President Biden promised to penalize those who stole untold billions in coronavirus funds. This March, Biden urged lawmakers to adopt $1.6 billion to help the Justice Department pursue criminals that stole pandemic money, along with new powers that might help the government prevent future abuse in other aid programs.

“Congress should act on the President’s full proposal to triple such strike forces, invest more in fraud and identity-theft prevention efforts, and double the statute of limitations on these crimes,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement late Wednesday.

But lawmakers have repeatedly ignored the president’s requests for money to fight fraud, while underfunding the budgets at the Justice Department and other top federal watchdog agencies. Instead, the two parties have sniped at each other politically, with Republicans accusing Biden of mismanaging federal funds — even though much of the country’s pandemic spending originated during the Trump presidency.

The lack of action has added to the pressure on the Justice Department, which commissioned a national task force to oversee coronavirus fraud investigations starting in May 2021. The agency has also tapped five U.S. attorneys’ offices nationwide to lead probes into the theft of government funds. Two of those teams known as “strike forces,” in Colorado and New Jersey, were announced Wednesday.

“We have so much work to do based on the reports that have come out [from oversight agencies] about the scope of the fraud,” said Michael Galdo, the acting director of covid-19 fraud enforcement at the Justice Department. “It’s hard work to recoup these funds. It’s very hard on the enforce side to track where all the money has gone.”

Some of the worst abuses targeted the nation’s unemployment system, as criminals seized on a period when roughly 1 million workers found themselves out of a job each day. Once Congress augmented these Americans’ weekly checks, malicious actors set their sights on outdated, overwhelmed state offices — and collected federal benefits in the names of real people.

The rampant theft often harmed innocent Americans, some of whom learned that their identities had been stolen only after they applied — and were denied — for jobless benefits. The caper contributed to an estimated $191 billion in potential losses, including fraud, according to a federal projection issued this year.

Others targeted the Small Business Administration, which ignored repeated warnings dating back to the Trump administration as it raced to dole out more than $1 trillion in aid — an amount that dwarfed the agency’s own annual budget.

In a report, the agency estimated that the SBA disbursed more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent loans and grants, including to people who used fake Social Security numbers. In its haste, the agency for years did not check its applicants for obvious warning signs, even neglecting to compare the names of those who sought aid against a federal anti-fraud list known as “Do Not Pay.”

The biggest impediment to free speech is people’s belief that they have it. Not censorship. Not refusal to platform critical voices. Not the war on journalism. It’s the fact that most people are propagandized into saying what the powerful want them to say, and don’t know it.

What makes our dilemma so historically unique is that we live under an empire which makes extensive use of the post-Bernays science of mass-scale psychological manipulation to trick its subjects into believing that they are thinking, speaking, and gathering information freely. In this way our rulers suppress any revolution long before it starts, not by making people’s lives better, nor by violent repression, but by manipulating people into thinking there’s nothing to revolt against, because they have no rulers and they are already free.

In our civilization most people are thinking, speaking, gathering information, working, shopping, moving and voting exactly as our rulers want them to, because these mass-scale psychological conditioning systems have been imposed to keep human behavior aligned with the empire. We are trained to believe we are free while behaving exactly how our rulers want us to behave, and to look down on other nations and shake our heads at how unfree their people are.

What the average mainstream partisan really means when they say they want “free speech” is they want to be able to regurgitate the power-serving narratives that were put in their mind by the powerful. That’s not free speech, it’s deeply enslaved speech. But they can’t see it. By design.

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ATLANTA, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Rudy Giuliani, who served as Donald Trump's personal lawyer, said he was traveling to Georgia on Wednesday to surrender over state criminal charges that he sought to overturn the former U.S. president's 2020 election loss.

Six other of Trump's co-defendants in the criminal case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis accusing him and his associates of trying to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia already have surrendered at an Atlanta jail, according to county records.

Speaking in New York, Giuliani denied wrongdoing and defended Trump.

"I'm going to Georgia and I'm feeling very, very good about it because I feel like I'm defending the rights of all Americans," Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and New York City mayor, told reporters. "I'm telling the truth, they're lying."

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination to face Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, was set to turn himself in on Thursday to face his fourth criminal indictment this year. The remaining 11 co-defendants named in the Georgia indictment have until Friday to surrender.

Trump has called his four indictments politically motivated.