US Politics

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years, in an interview before his meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, next week.Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.“We have a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years,” Putin said, according to an NBC translation of excerpts of an interview broadcast on Friday.Putin characterised the former US president Donald Trump as “an extraordinary individual, talented individual”, but impulsive, and said Biden, as a career politician, was “radically different” from the “colourful” Trump.“It is my great hope that, yes, there are some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements on behalf of the sitting US president,” he said, according to a translation by NBC News.Putin has openly admitted that in the 2016 vote he supported Trump, who voiced admiration for the Russian leader and notoriously at their first summit appeared to accept his denials of election interference.Biden, at the start of an eight-day visit to Europe this week, said: “We’re not seeking conflict with Russia.“We want a stable and predictable relationship … but I’ve been clear: the United States will respond in a robust and meaningful way if the Russian government engages in harmful activities.”Putin was asked about several Russian dissidents whose deaths have been blamed on Moscow, including the ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned in 2006. Putin dismissed the question and said some of those responsible for the deaths had gone to prison.Asked about Biden calling him a killer in an interview in March, Putin said he had heard dozens of such accusations. “This is not something I worry about in the least,” Putin said, dismissing it as part of “macho behaviour” common in Hollywood.Such discourse “is part of US political culture where it’s considered normal. By the way, not here, it is not considered normal here,” he said.On the issue of recent ransomware attacks that the United States has traced to Russia, Putin denied any knowledge of the hackings and called on Biden to reach an agreement with him on cyberspace, NBC News said.Putin also dismissed a report in the Washington Post this week that Russia was preparing to supply Iran with an advanced satellite that would enable it to track potential military targets across the Middle East. “It’s just fake news. At the very least I don’t know anything about this kind of thing,” Putin said, according to NBC News. “It’s just nonsense, garbage.” More

The Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has announced that the state will build a wall along its southern border with Mexico, sparking criticism from human rights and immigration advocacy groups.Citing the Biden administration’s rollback of Trump-era immigration policies, Abbott announced the border wall plans amid other security measures including plans for Texas to construct its own detention centers and $1bn of the state’s budget being allocated to border security. Abbott also declared that more undocumented immigrants will be arrested and sent to local jails versus being turned over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as Ice.“I will announce next week the plan for the state of Texas to begin building the border wall,” said Abbott at a border security summit in Del Rio on Thursday.“To be clear, this is an attempt to distract from his governing failures while targeting vulnerable migrants,” tweeted the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.“There is no substantive plan,” said Edna Yang, the co-executive director of immigration advocacy and legal aid group American Gateways, in a statement obtained by the New York Times. “It’s not going to make any border community or county safer.”“Governor Abbott is planning to steal Texans’ land for a political stunt,” tweeted Democratic Texas representative Joaquin Castro.It is unclear if Texas has the authority to construct a border wall following Biden’s cancellation of such building projects. The Biden administration had already threatened to sue Texas earlier this week after Abbott ordered that the state-licenses be revoked for any federally contracted facility that houses migrant children.Previous attempts to build a wall at the border, an ongoing campaign promise from former president Donald Trump, have been unsuccessful. Of the 1,000 miles of border wall Trump pledged to build on Mexico’s dime, only about 80 new miles of fencing that hadn’t existed before has been constructed. Trump also reinforced over 400 miles of barriers that already existed, using US taxpayer dollars to do so.Joe Biden, who promised to halt border wall construction, signed an order on his first day in office that stopped building projects on the border, implementing a 60-day review on the border wall project, and calling for unused border wall funds to be redirected. Since then, the US Department of Defense cancelled parts of the wall that were being built using military funding, reappropriating unspent funds for previously deferred military construction projects.Now, amid record increases in migrant children and families crossing the US-Mexican border, the Biden administration has struggled to handle the surge in migrations. Currently, authorities have continued rapidly expelling migrants who arrive at the border, following pandemic practices started by Trump, and while allowing others to enter the US while they await legal process, in federal facilities, since Biden revised and ended Trump’s Remain in Mexico asylum policy.Republicans, including Abbott, have long criticized Biden’s rollbacks of Trump-era border policies, claiming that softer revisions are inspiring more attempts to cross the US-Mexico border. But, there has been little evidence that harsher border policies are effective. In particular, Trump’s border wall is scalable with common, $5 hardware store ladders.Immigration advocates in Texas have also decried Abbott’s claims of a violent crisis at the border and previous policy efforts to police the southern border, arguing that assertions of rampant chaos are inaccurate and previous actions have done little to address migration concerns. In March, following declarations of drug smuggling and human trafficking at the border, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, deploying hundreds of agents and government resources to posts along the US-Mexico border. More

The US justice department’s internal watchdog launched an investigation on Friday after revelations that former president Donald Trump’s administration secretly seized phone data from at least two House Democrats as part of an aggressive leaks inquiry related to the Russia investigation into Trump’s conduct.Democrats in Congress called the seizures a “shocking” abuse of power, while the White House labeled the revelations “appalling”.The announcement by the DoJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, came shortly after the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, made the request on Friday morning.Horowitz said he would examine whether the data turned over by Apple followed department policy and “whether any such uses, or the investigations, were based upon improper considerations”.It was revealed late on Thursday that the US justice department under Trump had taken data from the accounts of at least two members of the House of Representatives intelligence committee in 2018 as part of an aggressive crackdown on leaks related to the Russia investigation and other national security matters, according to a committee official and two people familiar with the investigation.Prosecutors from the previous president’s DoJ subpoenaed Apple for the data, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the secret seizures first reported by the New York Times.The records of at least 12 people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually shared, including the chairman, Adam Schiff, who was then the top Democrat on the committee.The California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was the second member, according to spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein. The records of aides, former aides and family members were also siezed, including one who was a minor, according to the committee official.Apple informed the committee last month that their records had been shared, but did not give extensive detail. The committee is aware, though, that metadata from the accounts was turned over, the official said.The records do not contain any other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails, one of the other people said. The third person said that Apple complied with the subpoena, providing the information to the DoJ, and did not immediately notify the members of Congress or the committee about the disclosure.While the justice department routinely conducts investigations of leaked information, including classified intelligence, opening such an investigation into members of Congress is extraordinarily rare.Schiff tweeted: “Trump repeatedly demanded the DoJ go after his political enemies. It’s clear his demands didn’t fall on deaf ears. This baseless investigation, while now closed, is yet another example of Trump’s corrupt weaponization of justice. And how much he imperiled our democracy.”Trump repeatedly demanded the DOJ go after his political enemies.It’s clear his demands didn’t fall on deaf ears. This baseless investigation, while now closed, is yet another example of Trump’s corrupt weaponization of justice.And how much he imperiled our democracy.— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 11, 2021
The disclosures, as first reported by the New York Times, raise questions about what the department’s justification was for spying on another branch of government and whether it was done for political reasons.The Trump administration’s attempt to secretly gain access to data of individual members of Congress and others connected to the panel came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations – in Congress and by the special counsel Robert Mueller – into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump called the probes a “witch-hunt”, regularly criticized Schiff and other Democrats on Twitter and repeatedly dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found personally harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a justice department he often regarded as his personal law firm.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement that “these actions appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” waged by the former president.“The news about the politicization of the Trump administration justice department is harrowing,” she said.Schiff, now the panel’s chair, also confirmed in a statement on Thursday evening that the DoJ had informed the committee in May that the investigation was closed. Still, he said: “I believe more answers are needed, which is why I believe the inspector general should investigate this and other cases that suggest the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president.”The justice department told the intelligence panel then that the matter had not transferred to any other entity or investigative body, the committee official said, and the department confirmed that to the committee again on Thursday.The panel has continued to seek additional information, but the department has not been forthcoming in a timely manner, including on questions such as whether the investigation was properly predicated and whether it only targeted Democrats, the committee official said.It is unclear why Trump’s justice department would have targeted a minor as part of the investigation. Another Democrat on the intelligence panel, the Illinois representative Mike Quigley, said he did not find it even “remotely surprising” that Trump went after committee members’ records during the Russia investigation.“From my first days as part of the Russia investigation, I expected that eventually, someone would attempt this – I just wasn’t sure if it would be a hostile government or my own,” Quigley said.And the Florida congresswoman Val Demings, an impeachment manager in Trump’s first Senate trial, and who is now challenging Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio for his seat, tweeted: “It is outrageous but not surprising. We have a former president with no regard for the rule of law or for those who enforce the laws.” More

Before the second world war, states acted as they wished in international affairs, limited only by their resources and power. These circumstances began to change in August 1941, before America joined the allied cause. On a battleship off the coast of Newfoundland, the US president Franklin Roosevelt and the British prime minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic charter at a time when Nazi Germany appeared to be decisively winning the European war. A few months later, America, Britain, the Soviet Union and 23 other governments declared in the name of “United Nations” an intention to regulate the postwar world based on three revolutionary principles: free trade, non-aggression and democracy.Eighty years later, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson have signed a new Atlantic charter, to reflect a world of different threats and one in which the UK is a much diminished power. Mr Biden looks out and sees an increasingly dangerous world. In some ways the vista resembles the 1930s – with populists, nationalists and demagogues on the rise, European powers divided, and democracy vulnerable to foreign manipulation. There’s no mention of China in the 604-word charter, but it is the undeclared target of many of the policies regarding debt transparency, freedom of navigation and protecting the west’s “innovative edge”.There is much to agree with in the text, especially the focus on the climate crisis and promoting sustainable global development. It also calls for both countries to adhere to “the rules-based international order”, a welcome snub to the Trumpian idea that this was a threat to US power. However, the 2021 text is a pale imitation of its 1941 forerunner. There’s nothing remotely as bold as a new international law on governing relations between states.The original document’s genius was the realisation that the time to think and plan is not at the end of a crisis, but as it unfolds. For the past 15 months, Covid-19 shut down large swathes of the planet amid what was initially a chaotic me-first approach. The pandemic has accelerated trends already in progress and will usher in a new geopolitical era. As the grip of the pathogen loosens, the world will need new principles to address the deeper issues that led to a decline in international cooperation, creeping illiberalism, and a shift in the balance of power away from democracies.Mr Biden is looking for allies in his mission to ensure that the world remains conducive to a liberal, democratic way of life. Mr Johnson is looking for a role for Britain outside of the EU, and London almost always dances to Washington’s tune. But Mr Johnson’s inability to stick to the Northern Ireland protocol of the Brexit deal he negotiated saw the US issue a reprimand this week. Washington bluntly told Mr Johnson to come to a “negotiated settlement” with Brussels and accept, if needed, “unpopular compromises” – even if that means London temporarily aligning with EU rules on agriculture and slowing progress on a future UK-US trade deal. Mr Biden understands that allies will not begin to forge a better future by falling out with one another.Nations need international agreements to promote and protect their own interests. Cooperation between states requires rules. Attempts to abandon the idea of international restraint and go it alone usually end badly. There’s nothing in the new charter that other members of the G7, or the EU, could not sign up to. The world does not govern itself, and leading powers cannot abdicate their role in shaping international institutions – and mobilising others to defend them. If the world’s democracies were to turn away, then either others would step in or the world risks a descent into chaos as it did in the 1930s. More

A Republican politician who on Thursday became the first representative ever expelled from the Oregon state house said the people he covertly let into the state capitol in December were “mostly blue-haired old ladies”.In fact they were far-right agitators, among them members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group often involved in street violence, and people toting guns and Confederate flags and wearing militia regalia. Some attacked law enforcement officers with bear spray. Outside, reporters were assaulted and doors broken. Police struggled to force the rioters back.Widely seen CCTV footage from 21 December, when the state legislature was in special session and closed to the public, showed Republican Mike Nearman opening a door for agitators there to protest against coronavirus-related public health measures.In January, the Oregon house speaker, Tina Kotek, called for Nearman’s resignation, for putting “every person in the capitol in serious danger”.Referring to the 6 January riot in Washington DC by supporters of Donald Trump, she added: “As we tragically saw … during the insurrection at the United States Capitol, the consequences [in Oregon] could have been much worse.”Representatives of both parties called for Nearman to quit. Then, this month, new video surfaced in which Nearman described how the covert entry would work – and how he would deny knowledge if confronted.“We’re talking about setting up Operation Hall Pass,” he said, “which I don’t know anything about and if you accuse me of knowing something about, I’ll deny it. But there would be some person’s cellphone.”Nearman then gave out his number, claiming “that was just random numbers that I screened up. That’s not anybody’s actual cellphone. And if you say ‘I am at the west entrance’ during a session in [a] text to that number there, that somebody might exit that door while you’re standing there.“But I don’t know anything about that, I don’t have anything to do with that, and if I did, I wouldn’t say that I did. But anyway, the number that I didn’t say was [the number first mentioned]. So don’t text that number. But a number like that. Make sure you say what exit you’re at too.”In an interview on rightwing radio, Nearman said he had been speaking to the Oregon Citizens Lobby, which he said was “mostly blue-haired old ladies” but which local media called “right-leaning”.Nearman claimed to have been being “flippant” as he described his scheme, but also said he didn’t agree with closing the capitol and was willing to pay the price for his actions.That price includes charges of official misconduct and criminal trespass on which Nearman was arraigned in May, the same month he told conservative radio he had “a really bad case of Covid and I’m kind of on the mend a little bit”. Another hearing is scheduled.On Thursday, Nearman was ejected from the state House by a vote of 59-1. His seat will probably remain empty until the end of the session, later this month. More

A digital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections, the Guardian can reveal.In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates.Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies.Rally Forge would go on to set up a pro-Trump domestic “troll farm” for Turning Point Action, a “sister” organization of Turning Point USA, in 2020, earning a permanent ban from Facebook.“There were no policies at Facebook against pretending to be a group that did not exist, an abuse vector that has also been used by the governments of Honduras and Azerbaijan,” said Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee and whistleblower who played a small role in the investigation of the Green party ads.She added: “The fact that Rally Forge later went on to conduct coordinated inauthentic behavior with troll farms reminiscent of Russia should be taken as an indication that Facebook’s leniency led to more risk-taking behavior.”Devon Kearns, a spokesperson for Facebook, said: “We removed Rally Forge from our platforms for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. Since the 2018 midterms, we have strengthened our policies related to election interference and political ad transparency. We continue working to make political advertising more transparent on our platform and we welcome updated regulations and help from policymakers as we evolve our policies in this space.”The revelation that the ads were linked to a rightwing organization raises questions about the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement of campaign finance laws. APN and its ads appeared to violate federal laws that require independent expenditures to be filed with the FEC and include proper disclosures on advertisements, as ProPublica and Vice News first reported in 2018.The non-partisan campaign finance watchdog group Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint against APN and subsequently sued the agency in an attempt to force it to investigate the group. But in July 2020, the FEC voted to dismiss allegations that America Progress Now had violated federal law, after an individual, Evan Muhlstein, took responsibility for the ads and attributed the lack of proper disclosures and filings to his “inexperience”.It is illegal to knowingly make false or fraudulent statements to federal agencies, and the FEC appears to have taken Muhlstein at his word that the ads were a sincere but novice attempt to support Green party candidates.The former FEC commissioner Ann Ravel, who reviewed the case at the request of the Guardian, said that were she still on the FEC, she would now refer this “stunning” case to the justice department for investigation.“It seems as if it’s a clear fraud,” Ravel said, noting that the FEC general counsel’s office appeared to have been “misled” by Muhlstein. “The requirement for the justice department to take on an electoral matter is that it be serious and willful, and clearly in this case it was willful, in my opinion.”Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at CLC, said: “This is an example of why disclosure is so important in elections: swing state voters who saw ‘America Progress Now’ ads promoting Green party candidates would’ve had no idea that they were the handiwork of Republican political operatives. The FEC’s job is to enforce the transparency laws and protect voters’ right to know who is trying to influence them, but the agency here failed to conduct even a minimal investigation.”‘A crystal clear example of astroturfing’On 27 October 2018 – just days before the 6 November election – America Progress Now began running a series of ads that used leftist motifs, such as the red rose emoji and images of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to rail against the “corporate, two-party oligarchy” and the “corporate, capitalist wage system”. Some of the ads urged voters to choose a third party, but others endorsed Green party candidates by name – triggering FEC rules for independent expenditures.Following the 5 November publication of a ProPublica/Vice News report on the “mysterious” group behind the ads, Facebook launched a “hi-pri[ority]” escalation to investigate whether they constituted “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (CIB) – the name Facebook gives to the kind of deceptive tactics that a Russian influence operation used during the 2016 election.The investigation was straightforward since Facebook has access to information that regular users do not: the names of the people who control Facebook Pages. Investigators quickly realized that America Progress Now was administered by three individuals – Jake Hoffman, Connor Clegg and Colton Duncan – who also served as Facebook Page administrators for Turning Point USA, the rightwing college group founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012. Hoffman and Clegg were also administrators for Kirk’s Facebook Page.“These admins are connected to Turning Point USA,” one staffer from the civic integrity team said, according to internal task management documents seen by the Guardian. “This is very inauthentic. I don’t know what the policy here is but this seems very sketchy.” Another staffer named Rally Forge as being responsible for the ads. APN had spent nearly $5,000 to have the ads shown to users nearly 300,000 times, a third staffer noted.A rightwing political marketing firm that ran a $350,000 pro-Trump Super Pac in the 2016 election, Rally Forge was founded and run by Hoffman, an Arizona Republican who was at the time a member of the town council in Queen Creek, Arizona. In November 2020 Hoffman was elected to serve in the Arizona state legislature.Clegg and Duncan were alumni of Texas State University, where they had been elected student body president and vice-president respectively in 2017. Clegg was impeached and removed from office shortly before his term would have ended in 2018. Duncan resigned from his post in 2017; he appears to have been hired directly by Turning Point USA in 2019.Since 2017, Rally Forge has been Turning Point USA’s highest-compensated independent contractor, paid more than $1.1m over two years, according to the non-profit’s public filings. Turning Point Action, an affiliated organization also founded by Kirk, paid Rally Forge $700,000 for work supporting Trump and opposing Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign, and an additional $400,000 for work on the US Senate runoff races in Georgia.Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, said that neither Turning Point USA nor Turning Point Action had “any involvement” with America Progress Now or its Facebook ads.In addition to America Progress Now and Turning Point USA, Hoffman, Clegg and Duncan all also served as administrators for a number of other rightwing Facebook Pages. The trio each maintained two accounts to administer their Facebook Pages, one using their full names and one using their first and middle initials – a violation of the company’s policy that each user can only have one Facebook account. One of each of the three men’s accounts had been authorized by Facebook to run political ads, a process that required submitting a government ID to Facebook for verification.One of Hoffman’s accounts had spent approximately $650,000 to run Facebook ads on behalf of 40 Pages, including the official Page of Donald Trump Jr.The intention here is clearly to mislead usersHoffman declined to answer detailed questions from the Guardian, including about the nature of Rally Forge’s relationship with Muhlstein. “The premise of your questions is either ill-informed or intentionally misleading,” he said in a statement. “Rally Forge is a marketing agency, not a compliance company. Furthermore, it is my understanding that the small handful of ads, totaling less than 2,500 dollars, which qualified as independent expenditures, have been fully disclosed by the responsible organization in coordination with the FEC.”Duncan said that he had never heard of America Progress Now before the Guardian’s inquiries and had “zero knowledge or insight into the group”. When asked about the CG Duncan account, which had passed Facebook’s verification process and was an administrator of the APN page, he responded: “I urge you to reach out to JM [Hoffman]. Let me know what you find out, I’m as curious as you are.”Clegg did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him.Despite possessing clear evidence of inauthenticity, Facebook staffers determined the Green party ads did not violate existing company policies related to political ads or CIB. They decided to deactivate the three men’s extra accounts, but after the election and only after providing them with advance notice.The episode inspired some disquiet among Facebook staff.“What I find very problematic is that the intention here is clearly to mislead users,” said the civic integrity staffer. “The users in question clearly created a new FB page to hide their identity, which would be grounds for removal on most surfaces,” she added, referring to Facebook’s rules requiring people to use their real names on their accounts.One product manager produced an internal postmortem of the incident in which she described it as “a crystal clear example of astroturfing” – deceptive campaign tactics designed to appear as grassroots actions – “… as well as playing both sides … and political ad opacity, since users cannot see who they are. Furthermore, I could see making a case for voter suppression.”“Unfortunately, it turned out there was nothing we could do against these ads,” she added. “We ended up only aiming to remove a few [duplicate] accounts under the fake account policy, but only after proper notice – and I believe we have not removed them yet.”“Can we strengthen our ads transparency policies so that political ads are indeed transparent to the user?” she asked.A Facebook spokesperson said that the company had indeed removed the duplicate accounts following the midterms, and that Rally Forge’s network of Pages and accounts had gone dormant after November 2018. The company made a number of updates to its policies on political ads before the 2020 elections, including requiring advertisers to provide more information about their organizations before being authorized to run ads. It also introduced a new policy to encourage more transparency regarding who runs networks of Facebook Pages.Rally Forge reactivated its network of Pages and accounts in June 2020, according to Facebook. It established a domestic “troll farm” in Phoenix, Arizona, that employed teenagers to churn out pro-Trump social media posts, some of which cast doubt on the integrity of the US election system or falsely charged Democrats with attempting to steal the election, the Washington Post revealed.Facebook said that its automated systems had detected and deleted fake accounts made by Rally Forge, which then created “thinly veiled personas” to carry out deceptive campaigning. In October 2020, the platform permanently banned Rally Forge and Hoffman for violating its policy against CIB, work that Facebook said the firm had undertaken “on behalf of Turning Point USA” and another client.A spokesman for Turning Point USA disputed the characterization of the operation as a “troll farm” and noted that it was a project of Turning Point Action, which is a separate entity.Facebook did not take any enforcement action against Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action or Kirk with regard to the Phoenix operation. Facebook also did not disclose Rally Forge’s connection to America Progress Now and the deceptive Green Party ads.A forestalled investigationIn September 2019, CLC filed a complaint alleging that APN’s failure to register with the FEC violated federal law. The FEC responded by sending a letter to an inaccurate address that America Progress Now had listed on its Facebook Page, but it does not appear to have taken further action, prompting CLC to sue it in February 2020.“If nothing is done, the FEC will instead be sending a message that anonymous or fake entities like America Progress Now can pop into existence just prior to an election, exploit lax registration and reporting requirements by digital platforms, spend unlimited sums of money, and then disappear into thin air once an election is over,” the group said at the time.In April 2020, the FEC wrote again, this time to the address listed on an Arizona state business filing for America Progress Now.On 15 April 2020, Evan Muhlstein responded to the FEC by email. Muhlstein described the lack of filing as an “error”, writing, “I believe that it is important for the commission to understand that any potential failure on either of those items is based entirely on my inexperience to the process.” He wrote that he had “assumed that Facebook’s ‘political disclaimer/disclosure’ was all that was necessary”, said his expenditures totaled “only $2,467.54”, and expressed surprise that “a spend as small as this would require any type of reporting”.“I again offer my sincerest apology for any potential errors in failing to disclose,” Muhlstein wrote. “Given the apparent obstacles and unknowns of participating in the election process in this manner (of which I am learning some of now), it is highly unlikely I will ever participate in it again. I feel terrible for having been so ignorant to the process.”Muhlstein also expressed his desire to come into compliance “correctly and quickly”. At no point in the communication did Muhlstein disclose that the advertisements had been handled by a major political marketing firm.“Muhlstein’s statement to the FEC is extremely misleading and might warrant a criminal investigation,” said Fischer, of the CLC.Muhlstein did not respond to multiple attempts to make contact with him. His connection to Rally Forge is not known. He is a resident of Queen Creek, Arizona, the town where Hoffman also lives.The FEC has the power to issue subpoenas and carry out serious investigations, but only after a vote of four of its five commissioners.In a report dated 4 May, the FEC’s general counsel argued that, while it appeared that Muhlstein had violated federal law, the small amount of money involved and Muhlstein’s statement that he was unlikely to engage in further political spending led it to recommend that the FEC exercise prosecutorial discretion and dismiss the allegations with a warning.In July, the FEC voted to follow the general counsel’s recommendation and dismiss the case, forestalling any actual investigation.Commissioner James “Trey” Trainor went further, lambasting the CLC in a statement of reasons. “Contrary to CLC’s wild speculation, this case wasn’t about a ‘fake political group … exploit[ing] Facebook rules … and hid[ing] spending from the FEC,’” he wrote. “In fact, APN was established by an unsophisticated individual trying to show his support for several third-party candidates, but he got tripped by the myriad regulations governing online political speech.”Trainor asserted that “there was no evidence to contradict” Muhlstein’s statement to the FEC “and no evidence to support CLC’s salacious theories about the ‘unknown person or persons’ behind APN”.It would not be until 23 December 2020 – six months after the FEC had voted not to pursue the allegations of law violations and more than two years after the election – that Muhlstein would provide the FEC with that evidence, when he finally registered APN with the FEC and disclosed that the independent expenditure had been made through Rally Forge.The FEC did not respond to questions from the Guardian, citing a policy not to comment on enforcement matters. Trainor did not respond to a request for comment. Fischer said: “It looks like we were right.”Daniel Hernandez contributed reporting More

After Democrats derailed one of Texas’s most restrictive voting bills at the 11th hour – all but guaranteeing yet another partisan showdown in the near future – business leaders in the state have gone eerily silent as they plot their next steps.“Now would be a good time for them to say something like, ‘We’re glad it was defeated, we’re hoping that this does not move forward into a special session’,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund.“They can actually be proactive.”With a whopping 49 restrictive voting bills, Texas led a countrywide charge to undermine voter access, even as voting rights advocates warned the proposals amounted to a new version of Jim Crow and would disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.The targeted attack on voting rights sparked national outrage, including among the local business community, until Democratic lawmakers walked out of the Texas House to block Senate Bill 7 – one of the most controversial, far-reaching measures.But their last-minute maneuver has already set the stage for legislative overtime, rendering celebrations premature and forcing risk-averse corporate executives to consider whether they’ll re-enlist in the fight for round two.“If the fight is still ongoing, I think most businesses are gonna hold their fire, for lack of a better term, until they understand whether or not this thing is gonna come back – and in what form, and at what pace,” said Nathan Ryan, co-founder and CEO of Blue Sky Partners, which is part of the Fair Elections Texas coalition of business and civic leaders.Though timing remains unclear, Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott has expressed his intention to reconvene the state legislature for a special session, forcing lawmakers to address so-called “election integrity” after SB7’s failure.The sweeping legislation threatened public officials with state jail felonies for soliciting or distributing unrequested vote-by-mail applications, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting, and made it easier to overturn an election, among other provisions.Already, Texas has earned the unenviable title as the hardest place to vote in the United States. Further obstacles to the polls could prove disastrous for the state’s economy, in part by making it harder to recruit workers, cutting into productive work time, alienating major events or conferences and deterring would-be tourists.“I certainly know, when I make my travel plans, if I was thinking about going to Texas, I wouldn’t want to go,” Albright said.By 2025, measures restricting voter access would cause Texas to shed an estimated $14.7bn in annual gross product and more than 73,000 jobs from lower earnings, employment losses and reduced household purchasing power.An additional $16.7bn and 149,644 jobs would be lost from hits to tourism and economic development, according to economic research and analysis firm The Perryman Group.That financial blowback would persist for decades, with a cumulative drop in gross product in the trillions by 2045. It would also slice tax revenue, costing state and local entities billions.“Voter suppression is bad for business. Period. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for the economy,” Albright said.During the regular session, corporate giants and local businesses alike waded into the political debate to make rare public remarks discouraging attempts to roll back voting rights.In a letter by Fair Elections Texas, dozens of coalition members – including American Airlines, Microsoft, HP, Salesforce, Etsy and Patagonia – urged elected officials to “oppose any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot”.“We wanted to make a strong statement against any kind of legislation that would make voting less convenient, and cause lower turnout as a result,” Ryan said.Separately, Dell Technologies lambasted state lawmakers for trying to silence citizens’ voices, while American Airlines “strongly opposed” Texas’s restrictive voting bills.“At American, we believe we should break down barriers to diversity, equity and inclusion in our society – not create them,” the Fort Worth-based airline said in a statement.Texas’s Republican leaders hit back with bitter barbs that verged on intimidation, questioning companies’ understanding of the legislation and hinting at retaliation.“They need to stay out of politics, especially when they have no clue what they’re talking about,” Abbott said.“They might come down the street next session, have a bill they want us to pass for them. Good luck!” Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick added.Those incendiary comments likely influenced companies that ultimately decided against speaking out – and may have even chilled activism among some that had already made statements, Albright said.But “it’s not like these businesses just have to be completely intimidated by these threats coming from these governors, right?” he added. “’Cause at the end of the day, these governors need these businesses.”As company executives stare down the near-inevitability of a special session, Ryan believes the appetite remains to push back against voting restrictions.Part of that boils down to the potential for financial losses if a measure such as SB7 becomes law. But it’s also about safeguarding their employees and community members.“Companies don’t see this as Democratic party vs. Republican party. They truly do see this as small ‘d’ democratic,” Ryan said. “It’s the main civil right in our country.” More