US Politics

When Scott Gessler stepped up to the lectern in a Denver courtroom on Monday, he opened with a full-throated defense of American democracy.“When it comes to decide who should lead our nation, it’s the people of the United States of America who should make those decisions,” he said. “This court should not interfere with that fundamental value – that rule of democracy.”It wasn’t so much the argument that was significant as much as who Gessler was representing: Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who fought doggedly to have courts, state legislators, his vice-president and members of Congress throw out valid electoral slates from several states and declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential election.Gessler is defending the former president in a novel case in Colorado seeking to block him from appearing on the state’s ballot – a case that centers around whether Trump is disqualified from running for president under section 3 of the 14th amendment. The Reconstruction-era provision disqualifies anyone from holding office if they have taken an oath to the United States and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same” unless Congress votes to remove that disqualification by two-thirds vote.It is not the only one of its kind: the Minnesota supreme court heard a similar case this week and there is also a similar case already pending in Michigan, a key battleground state. States are tasked with ensuring that candidates for office meet the qualifications so the challenges to Trump’s candidacy are bubbling up through state court.The 14th amendment cases are part of a mosaic of legal efforts that seek to hold Trump and his allies accountable for overturning the 2020 election, but they are among the most important. While the cases are dry – steeped in legalese and historical understanding of constitutional text – they get at Trump in a way that none of the other suits can: blocking his return to political life.While the other cases could require Trump and his allies to face jail time, lose their law licenses, and pay damages for defamatory lies, none of them would block Trump from returning to the White House in 2024 (a criminal conviction does not disqualify someone from running or serving as president). If he wins the election, he could theoretically pardon himself in the federal cases against him or dismiss the prosecutions. And while no pardon would be available in the Georgia criminal case, it’s untested whether the constitution would allow a state to incarcerate a serving, elected president.Simply put, winning the election is widely seen as Trump’s best chance at escaping the criminal charges against him. Losing the 14th amendment cases would cut off that possibility.“Let me be clear. The purpose of our actions is to obtain rulings that Trump is disqualified from the ballot, not merely to have a political debate. Not at all to have a political debate. Not merely to air issues,” said Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, a left-leaning group that filed the challenge in Minnesota.“The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of section 3. Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same if not worse.”The 14th amendment measure was passed after the civil war and has never been used to block a presidential candidate from the ballot. It picked up steam this summer after a pair of conservative scholars authored a law review article saying that it applied to Trump.Trump’s lawyers have defended him by arguing that his conduct on January 6 did not amount to an insurrection, that Congress needs to pass a law to enforce the 14th amendment, and that its language does not apply to the president.But expert witnesses for the challengers in the Colorado case offered a wealth of historical and other evidence this week suggesting that what Trump did on January 6 was an insurrection as the framers of the 14th amendment would have understood it.Legal observers almost universally agree that the US supreme court, where Trump appointed three of the six members of the court’s conservative super-majority, will ultimately decide the issue and whether Trump is eligible to run for re-election. There is not a clear legal consensus and since the law is so untested, it’s not clear what the court will do.Outside of the courtroom, the biggest challenge may be getting a wide swath of Americans to accept the idea that someone they support may not be eligible to run for president. In a democracy, there is something viscerally distasteful about not being able to vote for the person we support, Ned Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, noted earlier this year.It’s a question the supreme court justices in Minnesota seemed to be wrestling with as well, acknowledging the case was coming up on a line between politics and the law.“Let’s say we agree with you that section 3 is self-executing, and that we do have the authority under the relevant statute to keep Mr Trump’s name off the ballot. Should we – is the question that concerns me the most,” Natalie Hudson, the chief justice of Minnesota’s supreme court said on Thursday during oral argument.But the challengers in the cases, which are supported by left-leaning groups, argue that disqualifying Trump based on the 14th amendment is no different than disqualifying someone because they are under the age of 35, a naturalized citizen, or because they have served two terms as president.“In many ways, section 3 sets forth a qualification for president that is far more important than the other constitutional criteria,” Fein said. “Most Americans are not too worried about whatever dangers might have once been posed by somebody who was not a natural born US citizen.“But someone who broke an oath to the constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the constitution poses a real danger if they’re ever allowed back into power.”Rachel Leingang contributed reporting from Minneapolis More

Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor of New York in August 2021, amid a blizzard of sexual harassment allegations. None were prosecuted. Against this backdrop, he smolders. Once a giant figure in the Democratic ranks, he is out of a job. He “died as he lived”, Lis Smith, a former adviser, wrote in Any Given Tuesday, her memoir published last year. Cuomo had “zero regard for the people around him and the impact his actions would have on them”.Enter Melissa DeRosa with What’s Left Unsaid, a full-throated defense of her own former boss. On the page and while promoting her book, Cuomo’s chief adviser and most senior aide generally wields a sledgehammer. Except when she doesn’t.“I don’t want to comment on Lis’s book,” De Rosa said, when asked by Vanity Fair. “We all lived through this in our own ways. We all had to cope with the fallout of it.”Subtitled My Life at the Center of Power, Politics and Crisis, DeRosa’s memoir is pocked with scenes of a marriage gone south, of trying to cope with Covid-19 and of general governmental strife. She punches hard. Her anger is white hot. Her book is deliberate and focused.She slams Cuomo’s accusers. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and Kathy Hochul, Cuomo’s successor as governor, get it in the neck. Aides to James had sexual harassment-related problems of their own, DeRosa charges. She also calls out CNN and the New York Times for their own alleged deficits on that score.DeRosa has connections. She interned in Hillary Clinton’s office, when Clinton was a New York senator. She thanks Clinton for helping put steel in her spine. She gives a shoutout to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s close aide. DeRosa led New York operations for Barack Obama’s political action committee. She rose through the ranks of state government and Cuomo’s office. She charges Hochul with administrative and political ineptitude, echoing criticism, leveled by Nancy Pelosi, that Hochul cost the Democrats control of the US House by screwing up the New York redistricting process, handing Republicans seats.“The governor didn’t realize soon enough where the trouble was,” Pelosi told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. But here, DeRosa can be myopic. According to Bill de Blasio, the former New York mayor, Cuomo was also at fault in the process that most observers say facilitated Republican gains. If a mere 89 more New Yorkers had been counted, the size of the state’s congressional delegation would have suffered no loss in size.“For God’s sake, if the state had invested in the census, could you have found 89 more people to count? Sure, easily,” De Blasio has said. “This was a lost opportunity by the state government to get the count right.”DeRosa acknowledges tensions between mayor and governor but takes De Blasio to task for his embrace of leftwing politics.“That meant staking out a position that actively opposed police presence,” she writes, blaming De Blasio for problems related to crime. She also calls him out for sidling up to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star in Congress, and mocks his presidential run to nowhere.DeRosa also deals with the fractious relationship between Cuomo and the White House of Donald Trump, for so long a New York fixture and a former client of the Cuomo family law firm, Blutrich, Falcone & Miller.In 2020, under Covid, New York lockdown policy put it at odds with the administration.“We’ve done polling, and you guys are in the wrong place on this,” a “smug” Jared Kushner is quoted as telling DeRosa, saying New York was out of sync with Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Florida.“We were in the middle of a pandemic, one that had already killed tens of thousands of people, and I was talking with President Trump’s top adviser … about polling in swing states,” DeRosa writes.In fall 2021, Ron DeSantis actively discouraged vaccination. The grim reaper had a field day on the governor’s front lawn. Florida came to surpass New York in fatalities, in absolute and relative numbers. According to the Lancet, Florida’s unadjusted death rate (per 100,000) was 416, for New York 384.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDeRosa also attacks Trump for reneging on federal assistance to infrastructure projects. Why? Cuomo publicly criticized Trump. To quote DeRosa, “the president of the United States had lost his mind over four sentences in a convention speech.”Yet Cuomo has more in common with Trump than DeRosa acknowledges. It went beyond being “two tough guys from Queens, raised by larger-than-life fathers”, as the author puts it. Confronted with pushback over his decision in 2014 to disband an anti-corruption commission which he himself appointed, Cuomo bellowed: “It’s my commission. I can appoint it, I can disband it. I appoint you, I can un-appoint.”L’état, c’est moi.DeRosa pays tribute to family. In summer 2021, as Cuomo was brought crashing down, she repaired to her sister’s in-law’s place on Cape Cod, away from prying eyes.She also deals with friends – some of them now former. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican congresswoman who become a top Trump toady, was a buddy and classmate. DeRosa “knew her as ‘Little Elise’”. Stefanik landed at Harvard, DeRosa at Cornell. DeRosa reports a heated discussion over same-sex marriage that left Stefanik shaken. DeRosa compared her to a segregationist.The fact that Stefanik called for Cuomo and his senior staff to resign probably triggered this trip down memory lane. Left unmentioned: Stefanik was one of 39 Republicans, and the sole member of House GOP leadership, to vote in favor of federal protection for same-sex and interracial marriage.Promoting her book, DeRosa was asked by Vanity Fair about Cuomo, karma and payback. She said: “I don’t like to think that we live in a world where the answer is, ‘Well, you got it because you deserved it.’”Vanity Fair’s headline? “Melissa DeRosa Isn’t Done Defending Andrew Cuomo”. She and her boss are not about to disappear.
What’s Left Unsaid is published in the US by Sterling Publishing More

The new House speaker, Mike Johnson, knows how he will rule: according to his Bible. When asked on Fox News how he would make public policy, he replied: “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” But it’s taking time for the full significance of that statement to sink in. Johnson is in fact a believer in scriptural originalism, the view that the Bible is the truth and the sole legitimate source for public policy.He was most candid about this in 2016, when he declared: “You know, we don’t live in a democracy” but a “biblical” republic. Chalk up his elevation to the speakership as the greatest victory so far within Congress for the religious right in its holy war to turn the US government into a theocracy.Since his fellow Republicans made him their leader, numerous articles have reported Johnson’s religiously motivated, far-right views on abortion, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights. But that barely scratches the surface. Johnson was a senior lawyer for the extremist Alliance Defending Fund (later the Alliance Defending Freedom) from 2002 to 2010. This is the organization responsible for orchestrating the 303 Creative v Elenis legal arguments to obtain a ruling from the supreme court permitting a wedding website designer to refuse to do business with gay couples. It also played a significant role in annulling Roe v Wade.The ADF has always been opposed to privacy rights, abortion and birth control. Now Roe is gone, the group is laying the groundwork to end protection for birth control. Those who thought Roe would never be overruled should understand that the reasoning in Dobbs v Jackson is not tailored to abortion. Dobbs was explicitly written to be the legal fortress from which the right will launch their attacks against other fundamental rights their extremist Christian beliefs reject. They are passionate about rolling back the right to contraception, the right to same-sex marriage and the right to sexual privacy between consenting adults.Johnson’s inerrant biblical truth leads him to reject science. Johnson was a “young earth creationist”, holding that a literal reading of Genesis means that the earth is only a few thousand years old and humans walked alongside dinosaurs. He has been the attorney for and partner in Kentucky’s Creation Museum and Ark amusement park, which present these beliefs as scientific fact, a familiar sleight of hand where the end (garnering more believers) justifies the means (lying about science). For them, the end always justifies the means. That’s why they don’t even blink when non-believers suffer for their dogma.Setting aside all of these wildly extreme, religiously motivated policy preferences, there is a more insidious threat to America in Johnson’s embrace of scriptural originalism: his belief that subjective interpretation of the Bible provides the master plan for governance. Religious truth is neither rational nor susceptible to reasoned debate. For Johnson, who sees a Manichean world divided between the saved who are going to heaven and the unsaved going to hell, there is no middle ground. Constitutional politics withers and is replaced with a battle of the faithful against the infidels. Sound familiar? Maybe in Tehran or Kabul or Riyadh. But in America?When rulers insist the law should be driven by a particular religious viewpoint, they are systematizing their beliefs and imposing a theocracy. We have thousands of religious sects in the US and there is no religious majority, but we now have a politically fervent conservative religious movement of Christian nationalists intent on shaping policy to match their understanding of God and theirs alone. The Republicans who elected Johnson speaker, by a unanimous vote, have aligned themselves with total political rule by an intolerant religious sect.The philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard eloquently explained that religion is a “leap of faith”, not susceptible to reasoned discourse. The framers of the constitution and Bill of Rights thought the same. Under the first amendment, Americans have an absolute right to believe anything we choose and courts may not second-guess whether a believer’s truth is supported in reason or fact. For a believer, their belief is their “truth”, but for the republic, it is simply one of millions of beliefs across a country where all are free to believe. Thus, a scriptural originalist is by definition incapable of public policy discussions with those who do not share their faith.The grand irony is that being a “scriptural originalist” is oxymoronic. The colonies were first populated by those fleeing the theocracies of Europe – a fact the founders knew and respected. Millions were killed during the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the Spanish and Roman inquisitions, because only one faith could rule. Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, as well as many other kings and queens, ordered apostates killed, imprisoned or exiled. Current theocracies underscore this historical reality. The Pilgrims fled England because they were at risk of punishment and even death for observing the wrong faith. So did the Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians. Despite the ahistorical attempts of rightwing ideologues to claim we are or were a monolithic “Christian country”, this was always a religiously diverse country, and they did not all get along at first. Jews arrived in 1654. Early establishments faded away in the early 19th century as they could not be sustained in the face of our diversity.The primary drafter of the first amendment, James Madison, was keenly aware of these realities as he reflected on the dangerous history of theocracies in his famous Memorial and Remonstrance, opposing Virginia taxes for Christian education, asking: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”Madison further invoked the Inquisition, stating that a bill funding religious education through taxes “degrades from the equal rank of citizens all those whose opinions in religion do not bend to those of the legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance.” US history is proving him correct.Johnson isn’t just talking about a tax to support his brand of Christian nationalism, though the right’s religious movement, with the approval of the supreme court, has gone all out to ensure that as many tax dollars flow to their mission as possible. Johnson has asserted the hackneyed conservative theory of original intent – that the constitution must be interpreted precisely according to what the founders said – but with a twist. According to Johnson, George Washington and John Adams and all the others “told us that if we didn’t maintain those 18th-century values, that the republic would not stand, and this is the condition we find ourselves in today”. The founders, according to Johnson, were scriptural originalists and he’s here to take us back to their “true” Christian beliefs. In fact, the founders’ 18th-century enlightenment values directly repudiate Johnson’s 21st-century theocratic dogma.The Constitutional Convention itself shows how little support there is for the view that America started from a dogma-soaked worldview. During debates, Benjamin Franklin proposed bringing in a member of the clergy to guide them with prayer. Only three or four out of 55 framers agreed. The matter was dropped.Less than a decade ago, it looked like the religious right had lost the culture wars. The turning point seemed to be the decision in Obergefell v Hodges in 2015, which established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. “It’s about everything,” Focus on the Family’s James Dobson mourned, “We lost the entire culture war with that one decision.”But instead of surrendering, the truest believers vowed to supplant democracy. They doubled down on furiously grabbing political power, to force everyone else to live their religious lives. Led by the likes of Leonard Leo, a reactionary Catholic theocrat who is chair of the Federalist Society’s board of directors, Dobson and many other Republicans, including the then little-known Mike Johnson, remade the supreme court and instituted stringent religious litmus tests for Republican candidates. Unable to control the culture, they have mounted a legal-political crusade against all who refuse to embrace their religious worldview.In little over a year, since Dobbs, the theocrats have converted their belief in the divinity of the fetus and disdain for the life of the pregnant into law, in one Republican-dominated state after another. But that is just a preview. Johnson and his crusaders would like to insert their scriptural originalism into every nook and cranny of federal law and public policy, to create a blanket of religious hegemony. Conservative governors and legislators have shamelessly invoked their God as the legislative purpose behind such draconian limitations.In the US, the peaceful coexistence of thousands of faiths was made possible in great part by the separation of church and state, which was demanded by Baptists in Massachusetts, Virginia and other places where they were being ostracized, taxed, flogged, imprisoned and even killed for their beliefs. That separation, which is the wall that protects religious liberty and prevents religious hegemony, was engraved in the constitution. How cruel an irony that some of the spiritual descendants of those persecuted Baptists should, like Mike Johnson, pervert American history and the constitution to impose a theocracy that would mean the end of democracy.
Marci A Hamilton is a professor of practice and the Fox Family Pavilion non-resident senior fellow in the Program for Research on Religion at the University of Pennsylvania More

Leftwing Democrats in Congress have invoked a landmark law barring assistance to security forces of governments deemed guilty of human rights abuses to challenge the Biden administration’s emergency military aid program for Israel.Members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing say the $14.3bn package pledged by the White House after the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 Israelis breaches the Leahy Act because Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians. An estimated 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, among them 3,700 children, according to the Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas.The act, sponsored by the former Democratic senator Patrick Leahy and passed in 1997, prohibits the US defence and state departments from rendering security assistance to foreign governments facing credible accusations of rights abuses. The law was originally designed only to refer to narcotics assistance, but was later expanded, with amendments covering assistance from both state department and Pentagon budgetsSeveral governments, some of them key US allies, are believed to have been denied assistance under the law, including Turkey, Colombia and Mexico.Proponents of applying the act to Israel point to the rising death toll in Gaza from military strikes on the territory, the displacement of more than 1 million people from their homes and a surging humanitarian crisis after Israeli authorities cut water, food, fuel and electricity supplies.“I am very concerned that our taxpayer dollars may be used for violations of human rights,” said the congressman Andre Carson of Indiana in an email to the Guardian, in which he accused Israel of “war crimes”, citing this week’s deadly bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp and the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) alleged use of white phosphorus.“Last year, I voted to provide $3 billion dollars of strategic and security assistance to Israel. But we must absolutely make sure that none of those funds are used inappropriately, in violation of US law like the Leahy Act, or in violation of international law.”But earlier this week, the Biden administration said it was not placing any limits on how Israel uses the weapons provided to it by the US. “That is really up to the Israel Defense Force to use in how they are going to conduct their operations,” a Pentagon spokesperson, Sabrina Singh, said on Monday. “But we’re not putting any constraints on that.”The Israeli government and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have so far not responded to calls for a humanitarian pause and have rejected calls for a ceasefire, as demanded by some progressive Democrats.Joe Biden promised a lavish military aid package to Israel in an Oval Office speech after visiting the country following the Hamas attack. US commandos are currently in Israel helping to locate an estimated 240 hostages, the number given by IDF, including American citizens, seized in the assault, the Pentagon has confirmed.Carson, one of three Muslims in Congress, said he previously raised concerns about possible Leahy Act violations last year after the shooting death of the US-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank. An Israeli investigation subsequently admitted there was a “high probability” that she had been killed by Israeli gunfire, after initially blaming Palestinians.Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats – a political action committee that helped elect leftwing House members nicknamed “the Squad”, which include some of Congress’s most vocal advocates for Palestinian rights – also invoked the Leahy legislation.“I think the Leahy Act should absolutely be looked into right now, when we are seeing gross violations of human rights,” he said. “[The Israelis] are targeting refugee camps, hospitals, mosques all under the guise of self-defense or that one or other member of Hamas is hiding there. It doesn’t matter whether Hamas is there or not, because you are targeting civilians. No amount of tax dollars should be justified for that.”Like Carson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most high-profile members of “the Squad”, specifically identified the supposed use of white phosphorus – as claimed by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International – as a transgression that should disqualify Israel from receiving US assistance. The IDF had said it does not use white phosphorus against civilians, but didn’t clarify whether it was used at the time.“Deployment of white phosphorus near populated civilian areas is a war crime,” she said. “The United States must adhere to our own laws and policies, which prohibit US aid from assisting forces engaged in gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.”Congressional calls for scrutiny over US funding for Israel predate the current war in Gaza.Last May, Betty McCollum, a Democrat from Minnesota, introduced the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation bill, designed to prohibit US funds from being used to enforce Israeli occupation policies in the West Bank.“Not $1 of US aid should be used to commit human rights violations, demolish families’ homes, or permanently annex Palestinian lands,” McCollum said at the time. “The United States provides billions in assistance for Israel’s government each year – and those dollars should go toward Israel’s security, not toward actions that violate international law and cause harm.”The bill, which has not passed, was co-sponsored by 16 other House Democrats – including some who have not supported the current calls for a ceasefire – and endorsed by 75 civil society groups, including Amnesty, HRW and J Street.McCollum’s office did not respond to questions over whether she now supported extending her bill to Gaza or using the Leahy Act to block Biden’s emergency fund package.In a speech on the Senate floor this week, the senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called Israel’s Gaza campaign “morally unacceptable and a violation of international law” but stopped short of opposing Biden’s assistance program.Instead, he demanded a “clear promise” from Israel that displaced Palestinians will be allowed to return to their homes after fighting stops and for the abandonment of efforts to annex the West Bank, a territory claimed by Palestinians as part of a future state.“The United States must make it clear that these are the conditions for our solidarity,” he said.In a letter to the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, Sanders and five other Democratic senators – Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, Peter Welch and Mazie Hirono – said they supported approving Biden’s proposed overall $106bn aid package to Israel, Ukraine and other foreign crisis areas “without delay”.But they demanded that an equal sum be allocated to “domestic emergencies”, including childcare, primary health care and the opioid epidemic.A separate letter the six sent to Biden asks a series of searching questions about Israel’s invasion of Gaza.“We have serious concerns about what this invasion and potential occupation of Gaza will mean, both in terms of the long-term security of Israel and the well-being of the Palestinian residents of Gaza,” it says. “Congress needs more information about Israel’s long-term plans and goals, as well as the United States Government’s assessments of those prospects.” More

Misinformation is a key global threat, but Democrats and Republicans disagree about how to address the problem. In particular, Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply on removing misinformation from social media.

Only three weeks after the Biden administration announced the Disinformation Governance Board in April 2022, the effort to develop best practices for countering disinformation was halted because of Republican concerns about its mission. Why do Democrats and Republicans have such different attitudes about content moderation?

My colleagues Jennifer Pan and Margaret E. Roberts and I found in a study published in the journal Science Advances that Democrats and Republicans not only disagree about what is true or false, they also differ in their internalized preferences for content moderation. Internalized preferences may be related to people’s moral values, identities or other psychological factors, or people internalizing the preferences of party elites.

And though people are sometimes strategic about wanting misinformation that counters their political views removed, internalized preferences are a much larger factor in the differing attitudes toward content moderation.

Internalized preferences or partisan bias?

In our study, we found that Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to want to remove misinformation, while Republicans are about twice as likely as Democrats to consider removal of misinformation as censorship. Democrats’ attitudes might depend somewhat on whether the content aligns with their own political views, but this seems to be due, at least in part, to different perceptions of accuracy.

Previous research showed that Democrats and Republicans have different views about content moderation of misinformation. One of the most prominent explanations is the “fact gap”: the difference in what Democrats and Republicans believe is true or false. For example, a study found that both Democrats and Republicans were more likely to believe news headlines that were aligned with their own political views.

But it is unlikely that the fact gap alone can explain the huge differences in content moderation attitudes. That’s why we set out to study two other factors that might lead Democrats and Republicans to have different attitudes: preference gap and party promotion. A preference gap is a difference in internalized preferences about whether, and what, content should be removed. Party promotion is a person making content moderation decisions based on whether the content aligns with their partisan views.

We asked 1,120 U.S. survey respondents who identified as either Democrat or Republican about their opinions on a set of political headlines that we identified as misinformation based on a bipartisan fact check. Each respondent saw one headline that was aligned with their own political views and one headline that was misaligned. After each headline, the respondent answered whether they would want the social media company to remove the headline, whether they would consider it censorship if the social media platform removed the headline, whether they would report the headline as harmful, and how accurate the headline was.

Deep-seated differences

When we compared how Democrats and Republicans would deal with headlines overall, we found strong evidence for a preference gap. Overall, 69% of Democrats said misinformation headlines in our study should be removed, but only 34% of Republicans said the same; 49% of Democrats considered the misinformation headlines harmful, but only 27% of Republicans said the same; and 65% of Republicans considered headline removal to be censorship, but only 29% of Democrats said the same.

Even in cases where Democrats and Republicans agreed that the same headlines were inaccurate, Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to want to remove the content, while Republicans were nearly twice as likely as Democrats to consider removal censorship.

We didn’t test explicitly why Democrats and Republicans have such different internalized preferences, but there are at least two possible reasons. First, Democrats and Republicans might differ in factors like their moral values or identities. Second, Democrats and Republicans might internalize what the elites in their parties signal. For example, Republican elites have recently framed content moderation as a free speech and censorship issue. Republicans might use these elites’ preferences to inform their own.

When we zoomed in on headlines that are either aligned or misaligned for Democrats, we found a party promotion effect: Democrats were less favorable to content moderation when misinformation aligned with their own views. Democrats were 11% less likely to want the social media company to remove headlines that aligned with their own political views. They were 13% less likely to report headlines that aligned with their own views as harmful. We didn’t find a similar effect for Republicans.

Our study shows that party promotion may be partly due to different perceptions of accuracy of the headlines. When we looked only at Democrats who agreed with our statement that the headlines were false, the party promotion effect was reduced to 7%.

Implications for social media platforms

We find it encouraging that the effect of party promotion is much smaller than the effect of internalized preferences, especially when accounting for accuracy perceptions. However, given the huge partisan differences in content moderation preferences, we believe that social media companies should look beyond the fact gap when designing content moderation policies that aim for bipartisan support.

Future research could explore whether getting Democrats and Republicans to agree on moderation processes – rather than moderation of individual pieces of content – could reduce disagreement. Also, other types of content moderation such as downweighting, which involves platforms reducing the virality of certain content, might prove to be less contentious. Finally, if the preference gap – the differences in deep-seated preferences between Democrats and Republicans – is rooted in value differences, platforms could try to use different moral framings to appeal to people on both sides of the partisan divide.

For now, Democrats and Republicans are likely to continue to disagree over whether removing misinformation from social media improves public discourse or amounts to censorship. More

For the second time in two days, the White House denounced Fox News over remarks by a host relating to the Israel-Hamas war, following condemnation of Jesse Watters’ apparent incitement of violence against Arab Americans with condemnation of Mark Levin for calling two CNN anchors “self-hating Jews”.Andrew Bates, a spokesperson, said: “President Biden believes in an America where we come together against hate and don’t fan its flames. But not only is Fox News aligning with those who fan the flames of hate – Fox is paying their salaries.”Levin, who hosts Life, Liberty & Levin, a Fox News weekend show, attacked Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper of CNN on The Mark Levin Show, his daily radio show which is syndicated by Westwood One.Though Levin, who is Jewish, acknowledged Blitzer’s family history – all the CNN anchor’s grandparents were killed in the Holocaust – Levin said Blitzer’s parents “weren’t victims”. Regarding Blitzer’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, Levin called the host “a dumb bastard” with “a hearing problem and an IQ problem” who “wants Israel to die”.Blitzer was a “self-hating Jew”, Levin said, reaching for a label he previously applied to Tapper.CNN called Levin’s comments “wildly uninformed, inappropriate and shameful”, adding that his “antisemitic rhetoric is dangerous, offensive and should be universally denounced”.On Friday, the White House did so.“Lying to insult the pain that families suffered in the Holocaust has absolutely no place in America,” Bates said. “None. Sadly, this is not the first time in recent months that a Fox News host made sickening remarks about the Holocaust.“Despite condemnation from the Auschwitz Memorial, Fox has not even disagreed with Greg Gutfeld’s reprehensible claim that Nazi labour camps taught Jews to be ‘useful’.”In July, during a debate over the rightwing claim that some Black people benefited from being enslaved, Gutfeld said on air: “Did you ever [read] Man’s Search for Meaning? Vik[tor] Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility. Utility kept you alive.”On Friday, in his statement on Levin’s comments, Bates said: “It isn’t even the first time this week that a Fox host chose to abuse their platform and spread hate.”A day before, Bates condemned comments in which Watters, discussing instances of pictures of Israeli hostages held by Hamas being taken down from public display, seemed to advocate violence.Watters said: “If you’re an Arab American in this country, and you rip down posters of Jewish hostages, American hostages, no. No, no, no. Someone is going to get punched in the face.”Referring to a recent killing in Illinois, now the subject of murder and hate crime charges, Bates said: “Even after the heartbreaking killing of a six-year-old Palestinian American child and a surge in violence against Muslims and Arab Americans, two nights ago Jesse Watters made vile comments that attack the dignity of all Americans, saying he’s ‘done’ with Arab Americans and Muslims.“And Fox News continues to promote the cynical, dangerous lie that fighting against Islamophobia is somehow at odds with fighting antisemitism, even as they permit hosts to hurt their viewers with foul antisemitic comments.“President Biden will always stand up against antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of hate. Fox News needs to stop standing up on behalf of hate.”Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

Yesterday evening, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a bill to provide Israel with security assistance as it presses on with its invasion of Gaza and conflict with Hamas. But the measure is not expected to be considered by the Senate, and has attracted a veto threat from Joe Biden over provisions rescinding money from the IRS tax authority and driving up the US budget deficit.Democrats are instead holding out for a larger package that would, as Biden has requested, pay for more military aid to Ukraine and improved border security in addition to aiding Israel, while also avoiding cuts to White House priorities like improving the IRS’s ability to crack down on tax cheats. Such a measure is expected to attract some support from Senate Republicans, most notably Mitch McConnell, who has remained a champion of Ukraine even as polls show many other Republicans are growing wary of paying for the country’s defense against Russia.Back to the House vote, it was 226 to 196 in favor of passage, with all but two Republicans present voting yes and all but 12 Democrats in attendance voting against it. Several of the Democrats who voted for the bill had previously attacked it as inappropriately partisan, including Florida’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who said she nonetheless decided to support it due to her connection to Israel:There appears to be a shift in sentiment towards Israel’s invasion of Gaza in Washington DC, particularly among Senate Democrats. A group of 13 lawmakers has signed on to a joint statement calling for a humanitarian pause in Israel’s campaign to root out Hamas, and in a visit to Tel Aviv, secretary of state Antony Blinken made a similar request. The Senate now seems to be on a collision course with the House, which last night passed a bill to send Israel military assistance while also slashing funding to the IRS tax authority. That’s a nonstarter for Democrats, and their Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, says the measure won’t be considered in the chamber, while minority leader Mitch McConnell also seems uncomfortable with it.Here’s what else happened today:
Next Tuesday is election day for off-year contests, including in Ohio, where voters will be asked to protect abortion access in the state constitution, and Virginia, where Democrats hope to defang Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.
House Democrats are also expressing concerns publicly over the number of civilians killed in Israel’s invasion of Gaza, including California progressive Ro Khanna.
George Santos will run for re-election next year, even if he is expelled from the House, he told CNN.
Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary and first openly gay person to serve in a president’s cabinet, condemned Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s history of anti-LGBTQ+ statements.
Got questions about Israel and Palestine? The Guardian has answers.
It’s not just Senate Democrats who are questioning Israel’s handling of its invasion of Gaza.House Democrats are also publicly worrying over the mounting civilian death toll. Here’s California progressive Ro Khanna telling CNN that while he supports Israel’s right to defend itself, he believes too many civilians are dying in its invasion:Joe Biden has arrived in Lewiston, Maine, site of a mass shooting last week that left 18 people dead.He is currently visiting Schemengees Bar and Grille, one of two locations where army reservist Robert Card opened fire:Biden is expected to meet with first responders in Lewiston, as well as survivors of the attack and family members of the victims, before heading to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware for the weekend.In the weeks since the killings, reports have emerged that people who knew Card tried to sound the alarm about his behavior. Here’s more on that:Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay man to serve in a US president’s cabinet, condemned Republican House speaker Mike Johnson for his history of making anti-LGBTQ+ statements.In an interview with CNN, Buttigieg said, “I will admit it’s a little bit difficult driving the family minivan to drop our kids off at daycare, passing the dome of the Capitol knowing the speaker of the House, sitting under that dome, doesn’t even think our family ought to exist.”Here’s more from Buttigieg:Johnson has a long history of disparaging same-sex couples, including in 2004, when he wrote a newspaper op-ed saying homosexuality was “inherently unnatural”. Since being elected speaker last month, he has avoided making similar statements, telling Fox News commentator Sean Hannity in an interview that he “genuinely love[d] all people regardless of their lifestyle choices.”“Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview”, he added. Here’s some further reading on that:With Chuck Schumer saying he will ignore a House Republican bill to give Israel military assistance while cutting funding to the IRS, it seems likely Senate Democrats will soon propose a measure that lines up with Joe Biden’s demands.The president last month asked lawmakers to approve aid to both Israel and Ukraine, and money for border security. At a press conference earlier today, the Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that proposal would be welcomed by his lawmakers:The bigger question is what Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will do with it, and whether it would have the votes to pass Congress’s lower chamber, where a growing faction of GOP members are opposed to aiding Ukraine.There appears to be a shift in sentiment towards Israel’s invasion of Gaza in Washington DC, particularly among Senate Democrats. A group of 13 lawmakers has signed on to a joint statement calling for a humanitarian pause in Israel’s ongoing invasion to root out Hamas, and in a visit to Tel Aviv, secretary of state Antony Blinken made a similar request. The Senate now seems to be on a collision course with the House, which last night passed a bill to send Israel military assistance while also slashing funding to the IRS tax authority. That’s a nonstarter for Democrats, and their Senate leader Chuck Schumer says the measure won’t be considered in the chamber, while minority leader Mitch McConnell also seems uncomfortable with it.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Next Tuesday is election day for off-year contests, including in Ohio, where voters will be asked to protect abortion access in the state constitution, and Virginia, where Democrats hope to defang Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.
George Santos will run for re-election next year, even if he is expelled from the House, he told CNN.
Got questions about Israel and Palestine? The Guardian has answers.
Proceedings are done for the day in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in New York, where Eric Trump testified again.Here’s a taste of Lauren Aratani’s report:
Eric Trump, one of the two sons trusted to run Donald Trump’s real estate empire, testified on Friday that he was not involved with the financial documents a judge has ruled to be fraudulent, in a trial that threatens to hobble his family’s business.
In a second day on the witness stand, the former US president’s second son said he relied on outside accountants and lawyers to check financial documents. His older brother Donald Trump Jr made the same argument in his testimony earlier this week.
Prosecutors presented evidence that showed Eric Trump had signed off on documents that estimated the value of trophy properties such as the Trump Seven Springs estate north of New York City and the Trump National Doral golf club in Florida.
That undercut his testimony on Thursday that he knew nothing about those estimates, which Judge Arthur Engoron found were fraudulently inflated to win favorable terms from lenders and insurers.
And here’s Lauren’s report in full.And here’s some further reading, by me, about the Trump boys’ tactics in court:Thirty-one Democrats voted not to expel the Republican lawmaker George Santos from the US House of Representatives because he has not been convicted of any crime and to eject him would set a dangerous precedent for Republicans to expel their ideological opponents, a leading congressman said.“For me this was an easy call,” said Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a law professor and influential progressive who sat on the January 6 committee and was lead manager in Donald Trump’s impeachment for inciting the attack on Congress.Santos “hasn’t been convicted of anything yet, and he has not been convicted of anything in our ethics process”, Raskin told Mother Jones.“The history is very telling. We’ve expelled five people in the history of the US House of Representatives. Three of them were Confederate traitors and the other two had other federal criminal convictions.”James A Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, was the last House member to be expelled, in 2002 and after being convicted of crimes including conspiracy to commit bribery, obstruction of justice and racketeering. After seven years in jail, he attempted to run for re-election.Raskin continued: “For us to take the step of expelling someone who had not been convicted of anything would be a really dangerous manoeuvre, especially with the Republicans in control of the House.”Read on:And also, as a footnote, some recommended reading, in the form of the great David Grann on the curious case of James A Traficant, for the New Yorker. This is just a taste – you really owe it to yourself to buy Grann’s book of New Yorker pieces, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness and Obsession, before today is through…George Santos, the New York fabulist, part-time drag enthusiast, accused fraudster and congressman, told CNN earlier he would “absolutely” run for re-election next year even if he is expelled from Congress over his criminal charges.Santos survived an expulsion vote, over 23 federal criminal charges to which he pleaded not guilty, on a motion brought by members of his own party this week. He could face another such vote after a House ethics committee investigation concludes later this month.Here’s his conversation with the great corridor-haunter himself, Manu Raju, CNN chief congressional correspondent:Raju: “So, if they expel you, and then they put someone else in the seat, you’re going to run in 2024?Santos: “Absolutely.”Raju: “Uh-huh. Can you win a primary, given of all these things that are lined up against you…”Santos: “Yes. Yes.”Raju: “… and the general election?”Santos: “Well…”Raju: This is a Biden-leaning district. And you have all these issues against you.Santos: “Could I have won the general election last time? Nobody said I could. But I survived.”Raju: “It was a different situation.”Santos: “No, I understand. But elections are tricky. There’s no predetermined outcome.Raju: “Your voters thought they were electing one person.”Santos: “Manu, nobody elected me…”Raju: “And that wasn’t true.”Santos: “Nobody elected me because I played volleyball or not. Nobody elected me because I graduated college or not.“People elected me because I said I’d come here to fight the swamp, I’d come here to lower inflation, create more jobs, make life more affordable, and the commitment to America. That’s why people voted for anybody. To say that they voted based on anybody’s biography, I can beg you this. Nobody knew my biography. Nobody opened my biography who voted for me in the campaign.”Unfortunately for Santos, once he got to Congress, lots of reporters did open his biography. And, explaining the volleyball reference, a lot of it turned out not to be true.And that was before the criminal charges.Shifting back to Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, here’s Connecticut’s Democratic senator Chris Murphy on why he is now calling for a temporary pause in the fighting.Murphy and 12 other Democratic senators signed onto a statement advocating for a “short-term cessation of hostilities” to get hostages out of Gaza and humanitarian aid in. He elaborates on the call, in an interview with MSNBC:Also happening next Tuesday are legislative elections in Virginia, where Republicans hope to take full control of Senate and empower GOP governor Glenn Youngkin to enact his agenda unimpeded. The Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports on how a Democratic congresswoman who conquered new territory for the party five years ago is working to help state-level candidates do the same:As two dozen volunteers prepared to knock doors on an unseasonably warm afternoon in late October, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger reminded them that their work helped flip her battleground House seat in 2018. She predicted it would pay off again for Virginia Democrats this year.“It is how we have won in hard races across Virginia and across the country, and it is certainly why I feel confident that we are on the right path headed towards November 7,” Spanberger said, speaking to campaign volunteers in a sunny parking lot in Manassas.Spanberger has played an active role in boosting Virginia Democrats’ hopes for election day, as the party looks to flip control of the house of delegates and maintain their majority in the state senate. The stakes are high: Republicans would achieve a legislative trifecta in Richmond if they take control of the state senate, allowing them to enact controversial policies like banning abortion after 15 weeks and limiting access to the ballot box.With her carefully crafted political persona as a centrist Democrat, Spanberger may be the right person to deliver her party’s closing message in the final stretch of the campaign. In Manassas, Spanberger laid out her vision for how Virginia Democrats would succeed on 7 November, saying: “There is nothing more important than helping people believe that the policies and the government – whether it be in Richmond or on Capitol Hill – that they want is possible.”The results on Tuesday could affect Spanberger’s own future as well; the congresswoman has reportedly told multiple people that she intends to run for governor in the battleground state. If she is successful, her victory would allow Democrats to take back the Virginia governorship, which is now held by Republican Glenn Youngkin, in 2025.It’s not 2024 yet, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any important elections happening this year. Indeed, next Tuesday is election day in several states nationwide for off-year contests over ballot initiatives, governor’s mansions and other key questions. Here’s the Guardian’s Alice Herman with some troubling news out of Ohio, where voters will decide on whether to protect abortion access in the state constitution:Ohio’s Republican secretary of state quietly canceled the voter registrations of more than 26,000 voters in late September, less than two weeks before the deadline to register to vote in next week’s hotly contested abortion referendum in the state.Voting rights advocates say the process lacked transparency and departed from Frank LaRose’s usual practice of alerting groups before removing registrations from the rolls. And it comes as LaRose campaigns hard against the 7 November constitutional amendment vote – when Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution – as well as a vote on a separate measure to legalize marijuana.“We are disappointed in the secretary of state’s office’s authorization of the voter purge while voting for the November election was already (and still is) under way,” Kayla Griffin, of the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said.Voter list maintenance is a standard, legally required part of the election process, and many if not most of these registrations are for people who have moved away, died or long since stopped voting. The state issues alerts by mail to voters whose registration is flagged for removal, leaving the chance to update or confirm their registration before being kicked off the rolls.But it’s unusual to remove voter registrations this close to an election given the risk of disenfranchising people who intend to vote but simply missed the memo that they had been flagged for removal. In fact, if this was a national election rather than a state-level contest, what LaRose’s office has done would have been illegal. The National Voter Registration Act prohibits elections offices from systematically removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election. More

Virginia Democrats are concerned that non-white voters in the state are getting their mail-in ballots flagged for possible rejection at much higher rates than their white counterparts ahead of a closely watched election day on Tuesday.Virginia, like all states, requires voters to fill out certain information on the envelope in which they return their ballot. In Virginia that includes their name, address, birth year and last four digits of their social security number. If any of that information is missing, voters have until 13 November to provide it. If they don’t provide it by the deadline, the ballot is rejected.An internal analysis by the Democratic Party of Virginia, shared with the Guardian, found election officials have flagged 6,216 mail-in ballots for possible rejection as of Friday – 2.89% of the total mail-in ballots cast. Voters have fixed issues with more than half of those ballots, the party said, so there are 2,783 ballots that could be rejected.Black voters were much more likely than white voters to have their ballots flagged for potential rejection, the party’s analysis showed. Statewide, 4.82% of ballots submitted by Black voters have been flagged for rejection as of Friday, compared with 2.79% for white voters, the party’s analysis showed.“This is unacceptable, and raises the stakes for election officials to get this right. Every Virginian has a constitutional right to vote and have that ballot counted. That means taking the ballot cure process seriously,” Aaron Mukerjee, who is leading the state party’s voter protection efforts said in a statement.The Virginia department of elections did not return a request for comment.Even if the majority of voters are able to cure their ballots, it’s still alarming to see racial disparities in the ballots being flagged, Mukerjee said.“This is just an additional burden, especially for voters of color, who are now having to go through a multi-stage process in order to have their vote counted with no discernible benefit to the security of elections,” he said in an interview.In some localities, the disparity was clear, according to the Democratic party’s analysis. In Richmond, the state capital, more than 11% of ballots returned by Black voters were flagged for possible rejection, compared with about 5.5% for white voters. In Henrico county, more than 6.5% of ballots returned by Black voters were flagged for rejection, compared with about 3% for white voters.And even after significant numbers of voters have cured their ballots in both counties, the potential rejection rate for Black voters remained more than twice as high as their white counterparts.Under state law, local election officials are required to contact voters who turned in mail-in ballots by Friday and inform them that they need to cure their ballot. Mukerjee said the party was concerned because it was hearing from voters who had not received notice from local election offices.While the number of ballots rejected is usually a tiny fraction of the total votes cast, the uncounted votes make a difference in state legislative races, which can be decided by razor-thin margins. In 2018, a house of delegates race resulted in a tie and was determined by a drawing from a hat. The Republican candidate won the contest, giving the party control of the house of delegates.The cure period past election day, something many states allow, also could delay final election results in close races as candidates and parties race to track down those whose ballots have been flagged to try and get them to cure any problems.Virginia recently changed its rules around mail-in voting, making it significantly easier to vote that way. Until this year, Virginia voters had to get a witness to sign their mail-in ballot. That requirement was eliminated on 1 July and replaced with a requirement that voters provide their year of birth and the last four digits of their social security number. At least one local registrar sent out incorrect and outdated voting instructions.It’s not clear what is causing the disparity. Mukerjee said about 40% of the rejections it had studied were because of issues with providing the last four digits of a social security number or birth year.Virginia’s elections next week will determine which party controls the state legislature and could give Governor Glenn Youngkin and state Republicans power to advance new restrictions on abortion among other GOP priorities.Last week, Virginia election officials said they had erroneously removed nearly 3,400 eligible people from the voter rolls, more than 10 times the number they had initially disclosed. Officials have said anyone wrongly removed will be restored to the rolls, though there are ongoing questions about how the error occurred and concerns about lingering confusion.Virginia reported rejecting 2,649 ballots in 2022 – less than 1% of those returned – and said more than 4,300 people had successfully fixed an issue with their ballot. More