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      Biden administration moves to restrict oil and gas leases on 13m acres in Alaska

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      The Biden administration said on Friday it will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13m acres (5.3m hectares) of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife such as caribou and polar bears as the Arctic continues to warm.The decision – part of an ongoing, years-long fight over whether and how to develop the vast oil resources in the state – finalizes protections first proposed last year as the Biden administration prepared to approve the controversial Willow oil project.The approval of Willow drew fury from environmentalists, who said the large oil project violated Biden’s pledge to combat the climate crisis. Friday’s decision also cements an earlier plan that called for closing nearly half the reserve to oil and gas leasing.The rules announced on Friday would place restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in areas designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values and call for the Bureau of Land Management to evaluate regularly whether to designate new special areas or bolster protections in those areas. The agency cited as a rationale the rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic due to the climate crisis, including melting permafrost and changes in plant life and wildlife corridors.Environmentalists were pleased. “This huge, wild place will be able to remain wild,” Ellen Montgomery of Environment America Research & Policy Center said.Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with Earthjustice, said the administration had taken an important step to protect the climate with the latest decision. Earthjustice is involved in litigation currently before a federal appeals court that seeks to overturn the Willow project’s approval. A decision in that case is pending.Earlier this week the Biden administration also finalized a new rule for public land management that is meant to put conservation on more equal footing with oil drilling, grazing and other extractive industries on vast government-owned properties.A group of Republican lawmakers, led by Alaska’s junior senator, Republican Dan Sullivan, commented ahead of Friday’s announcements about drilling limitations in the national petroleum reserve in Alaska even before it was publicly announced. Sullivan called it an “illegal” attack on the state’s economic lifeblood, and predicted lawsuits.“It’s more than a one-two punch to Alaska, because when you take off access to our resources, when you say you cannot drill, you cannot produce, you cannot explore, you cannot move it – this is the energy insecurity that we’re talking about,” Alaska’s senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, said.The decision by the Department of the Interior does not change the terms of existing leases in the reserve or affect currently authorized operations, including the Willow project.The Biden administration also on Friday recommended the rejection of a state corporation’s application related to a proposed 210-mile (338km) road in the north-west part of the state to allow mining of critical mineral deposits, including copper, cobalt, zinc, silver and gold. There are no mining proposals or current mines in the area, however, and the proposed funding model for the Ambler Road project is speculative, the interior department said in a statement.Alaska’s political leaders have long accused the Biden administration of harming the state with decisions limiting the development of oil and gas, minerals and timber.“Joe Biden is fine with our adversaries producing energy and dominating the world’s critical minerals while shutting down our own in America, as long as the far-left radicals he feels are key to his re-election are satisfied,” Sullivan said on Thursday at a Capitol news conference with 10 other Republican senators.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden defended his decision regarding the petroleum reserve.Alaska’s “majestic and rugged lands and waters are among the most remarkable and healthy landscapes in the world”, are critical to Alaska Native communities and “demand our protection”, he said in a statement.Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a group whose members include leaders from across much of Alaska’s North Slope region, has been critical of the administration’s approach. The group’s board of directors previously passed a resolution opposing the administration’s plans for the reserve.The petroleum reserve – about 100 miles (161km) west of the Arctic national wildlife refuge – is home to caribou and polar bears and provides habitat for millions of migrating birds. It was set aside about a century ago as an emergency oil source for the US navy, but since the 1970s has been overseen by the interior department. There has been ongoing, longstanding debate over where development should occur.Most existing leases in the petroleum reserve are clustered in an area that is considered to have high development potential, according to the Bureau of Land Management, which falls under the interior department. The development potential in other parts of the reserve is lower, the agency said.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Ilhan Omar’s daughter among over 100 arrested at Columbia University protest

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      Isra Hirsi, the daughter of the Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar was among more than 100 protesters arrested on Thursday on Columbia University’s campus in New York City, as police were called in to break up those who pitched tents to stage a pro-Palestinian protest.Further demonstrations protesting the arrests and the university’s decision to call in outside law enforcement continued into the night at the private Ivy League school.Tensions boiled over on Thursday as the New York police department arrived at the center of the campus in uptown Manhattan to began dismantling student protests over Israel’s war on Gaza at the direction of the school’s president.Hundreds of students had pitched tents and camped out, starting early morning on Wednesday, demanding a ceasefire and for the university to financially divest from Israel.Nemat Minouche Shafik, the university’s president who a day earlier came under fire from Republicans at a House of Representatives committee hearing on antisemitism on campus, said she had authorized police to clear an encampment of dozens of tents set up by protesters on Wednesday morning.“Out of an abundance of concern for the safety of Columbia’s campus, I authorized the New York police department to begin clearing the encampment,” Shafik said in a statement.Shafik said the protesters had violated the school’s rules and policies against holding unauthorized demonstrations, and were unwilling to engage with administrators.Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, said police made more than 108 arrests without violence or injuries. Police said the arrests were related to trespassing.Columbia said it had started to suspend students who had participated in the tent encampment, considered an unauthorized protest.“We are continuing to identify them and will be sending out formal notifications,” a university spokesperson said by email.At least three students – including Hirsi, Maryam Iqbal and Soph Dinu – have received suspension notices from Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, for participating in the encampment, the pro-Palestinian advocacy group Institute for Middle East Understanding said.“Those of us in Gaza solidarity encampment will not be intimidated,” Hirsi said on social media after being suspended.The clash was the latest in a series of demonstrations disrupting university campuses, bridges and airports since the latest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on 7 October, when Hamas, which controls the Palestinian territory of Gaza that abuts Israel, launched a murderous attack and hostage-grab on southern Israel.Israel’s military counteroffensive on Gaza is ongoing and has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and prompted famine in parts of the besieged territory.Alongside protests on US campuses and streets, human rights advocates have also pointed to a rise in bias and hate against Jews, Arabs and Muslims.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      ‘This is a violent attack against women’: Florida Senate candidate seeks to channel abortion outrage

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      A round table on abortion rights, hosted by Florida’s Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, has only just begun, and already she finds herself comforting a woman in tears with a very personal story to tell.The woman is from Colombia, and speaks softly in Spanish as she tells the intimate gathering of the Miami-Dade Hispanic Democratic Caucus about the distressing decision her daughter had to make to terminate a pregnancy after learning the fetus was not developing.“In Colombia, which tends to be a very conservative country, she was glad supportive medical professionals were there for her daughter in the decision, and grateful she had access to good-quality healthcare for it,” said Mucarsel-Powell.“It was traumatic and painful, but at least they could rely on that healthcare. I’m just seeing outrage, from men and women, that here, families are faced with having to live in a state where you will not be able to get that care, because most women don’t even know they’re pregnant at six weeks.”She was referring to the ruling by Florida’s supreme court earlier this month that will allow a six-week abortion ban, with few exceptions for rape or incest, to take effect on 1 May. It will end the state’s position as a bulwark of access to the procedure in the south-eastern US.Yet it has also acted as rocket fuel to the campaign of Mucarsel-Powell, an Ecuador-born former congresswoman and mother of two daughters. She seized on the issue to launch a statewide Freedom Tour championing the protection of abortion rights and exposing the “unapologetic and proud” support for the ban on the part of her opponent in November, the incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott.View image in fullscreenThe Hispanic Caucus event in Coral Gables was only the third of the tour, but Mucarsel-Powell said it was already clear that abortion is a “top-of-mind” issue galvanizing voters, as it is in other Republican-controlled states that have curtailed reproductive rights since the US supreme court ended almost 50 years of federal protections with its 2022 reversal of Roe v Wade.On Monday, her campaign announced it had raised over $3.5m in the first quarter of the year, with more than 5,300 new donors since the supreme court ruling. And Democrats across Florida are also sensing wind in their sails as opposition to the ban, as well as support for a court-approved ballot initiative that could enshrine access to the procedure in the state’s constitution, hardens.“This is a violent attack against women, because it is fundamental for us to make that decision on our own, with our healthcare provider, with our families, with our faith,” Mucarsel-Powell told the Guardian in an interview following the round table.“This is about protecting privacy, protecting healthcare for women, making sure that there’s no government interference, especially from extreme politicians like Rick Scott. I can tell you what people are thinking about this, and that it’s affecting women living in the state of Florida that were sent home when they thought they were having a miscarriage, and they weren’t able to get that healthcare.“And then they got very ill, and almost died because they didn’t receive that healthcare. So this is a top-of-mind issue, like so many other issues, but we’ll see in November how voters decide what are going to be their priorities. I think they’re going to make things very clear.”View image in fullscreenAlso clear is Mucarsel-Powell’s disdain for Scott, who she believes is vulnerable in November as he defends the seat he narrowly won from the incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson in 2018 by only 10,000 votes from 8.2m cast.“If he goes back to the Senate, he will push for a national abortion ban,” she said. “His true agenda includes signing away women’s reproductive rights and trying to control their bodies.“And he knows he will have to answer for his support of Florida’s ban in November. The choice is going to be very clear for voters, they know who I am, they know what I stand for, and who and what Rick Scott isn’t.An Emerson College poll this week showed that 42% of Florida voters planned to vote for the constitutional amendment that would overturn the Florida ban, far short of the 60% it would need to pass.Yet Mucarsel-Powell sees hope in the 32% who say they are still unsure. “A lot of people don’t know that this amendment is on the ballot, so the movement that has been created and has built this infrastructure on the ground is ready to make sure that everyone knows this is an issue,” she said.“The work is happening, it will continue to happen, and I think in November, the majority of Floridians will know that they have a choice. I believe they’re going to come out and vote for freedom.” More

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      The death of the Republican party is not a tragedy to be celebrated | Robert Reich

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      Last Sunday, on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor, about his recent switch from supporting Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, for the Republican presidential nomination to supporting former president Donald Trump.“Your words were very, very clear on January 11, 2021,” Stephanopoulos reminded Sununu. “You said that President Trump’s rhetoric and actions contributed to the insurrection. No other president in history has contributed to an insurrection. So, please explain.”Sununu responded: “For me, it’s not about him as much as it is having a Republican administration.”Near the end of the interview, Stephanopoulos said: “Just to sum up, you would support him for president even if he is convicted in classified documents. You would support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You would support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the last election. You would support him for president even if he’s convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”Sununu replied: “Yeah, me and 51% of America.”Stephanopoulos: “I’m asking you about right and wrong. You’re comfortable with the idea of supporting someone who’s convicted of a federal crime as president?”Sununu: “No, I don’t think any American is comfortable with any of this. They don’t like any of this, of course, but I mean, when it comes to actually looking at each of these trials as they kind of take place whether it’s this year or next year or as they kind of line up. Right now this is about an election. This is about politics.”Hello? Politics is not about right and wrong?I haven’t seen or heard a clearer indictment of the Trump Republican party.Friends, the Republican party is over.That’s tragic, because America needs two parties capable of governing. It needs two parties with a sense of the common good, even if their interpretations of it differ. It needs principled people in government. Even if politics is sometimes dirty and often frustrating, a functioning democracy depends on it.It’s tragic to me personally, too. I got my first job in government in the Ford administration (for those of you too young to remember, Gerald Ford was a Republican). I argued supreme court cases in Ford’s Department of Justice. Years later, as secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, I worked closely with several Republicans in the House and Senate to enact the Family and Medical Leave Act, raise the minimum wage and protect workers’ pensions.My father was a Republican who voted for Dwight Eisenhower for president in 1952 and 1956. His father, my grandfather, was a Republican who voted for Alf Landon for president in 1936 and Wendell Willkie in 1940.The Republican party once stood for limited government, active opposition to Soviet aggression and a balanced budget.Now it stands only for Trump and his authoritarian neofascism. It demands total loyalty to Trump. It has turned his big lie about the 2020 election being stolen into a litmus test of that loyalty. It has no principled core – no sense of right and wrong.Gerald Ford, the first president I served, is as far from the current Republican party as was or is any Democratic president.Sad to say, the Gerald R Ford Presidential Foundation recently declined to present the Gerald R Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service to former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney out of fear that a future President Trump would retaliate against the organization by taking away its tax-exempt status.In response, David Hume Kennerly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, resigned from the foundation’s board. In his resignation letter, he reminded the board that “Gerald Ford became president, in part, because Richard Nixon had ordered the development of an enemies list and demanded his underlings use the IRS against those listed. That’s exactly what the executive committee fears will happen if there’s a second coming of Donald Trump.”Kennerly added:
      Did [Lt] Gerald Ford meet the enemy head-on [in the second world war] because he thought he wouldn’t get killed? No. He did it despite that possibility. This executive committee, on the other hand, bolted before any shots were fired. You aren’t alone. Many foundations, organizations, corporations and other entities are caught up in this tidal wave of timidity and fear that’s sweeping this country. I mistakenly thought we were better than that. This is the kind of acquiescent behavior that leads to authoritarianism. President Ford most likely would have come out even tougher and said that it leads directly to fascism.
      Gerald Ford’s biggest mistake as president was to pardon Richard Nixon. At the time, Ford believed that America had to be shielded from the pain and disruption of a president put on criminal trial and possibly imprisoned. Yet to many Americans, the fact that Nixon would not be held accountable felt like another assault on the common good.To make matters worse, Nixon continued to insist he had not participated in any crimes. In his 1977 television interviews with British journalist David Frost, he conceded he had “let the American people down” but refused to admit to any wrongdoing.He said: “If the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” Those words continue to haunt America.In the end, Nixon pulled off an extraordinary political heist. He persuaded millions of working-class Americans that the Republican party was their home. Beginning in 1968, Republicans won five of the next six presidential elections. All used Nixon’s playbook, relying on a coalition of corporate America and the white working class, and using racial dog whistles like “law and order” and “welfare queens”.Nixon infected the modern Republican party with a sickness that would ultimately kill it. Donald Trump has finished the job.Sununu’s willingness to destroy American democracy so his party can stay in power is shared by most Republican office holders today. It is a rejection of American democracy – an abrogation of the self-government that generations of Americans have fought for and died for.The death of the Republican party is not to be celebrated. It is a tragedy. It is a testament to how fragile our democracy has become. It illustrates what happens when presidents are not held accountable. It is evidence of what occurs when decades of economic gains go mainly to the top.It shows that many Americans have lost sight of our history and ideals, or have become so cynical and hopeless that they are willing to chuck it all in favor of an atrocious human being who claims to be on their side.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Republicans divided over abortion ahead of elections – podcast

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      Last week the Arizona supreme court upheld a law first passed in 1864, which, if it goes into effect, will ban almost all abortions in the state. Democrats were quick to denounce the ruling, but some prominent Republicans were not happy with it either, including Donald Trump.
      Since the overturning of Roe v Wade nearly two years ago, individual states have had the ability to restrict abortion rights and several have jumped at the chance.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland and Moira Donegan of Guardian US discuss why Republicans are divided on restrictions they worked so hard to put in place. Why are once staunch supporters of abortion bans wavering? And as November fast approaches, will abortion be the issue that swings the election?

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      All 12 jurors seated for Trump’s historic criminal trial – as it happened

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      Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      12 jurors have been selected for Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial. One alternate juror has also been selected, with jury selection for five more alternates to resume tomorrow morning. The confirmations came after two jurors were removed from the jury earlier on Thursday.
      The first juror dismissed said she no longer believed she could be unbiased in the case. Since being selected on Tuesday, she had been targeted by Fox News host Jesse Watters, and said she had received a flurry of text messages from friends and family that led her to believe she had been identified.
      The second juror was excused after prosecutors expressed concerns that he may not have been truthful on his jury questionnaire. Prosecutors noted they found an article about a person with the same name who had been arrested in the 1990s for tearing down political posters.
      Prosecutors accused Trump of violating a gag order seven additional times. They have already filed a previous request to sanction him for breaking the order and a hearing on the issue is scheduled for next week.
      Judge Juan Merchan asked the media to stop reporting physical descriptions about potential jurors, concerned about their anonymity. Earlier this week he admonished Trump against intimidating jurors.
      That’s it as we wrap the blog up for today. Thank you for following along.Donald Trump was looking down at his hands on the table in front of him as judge Juan Merchan outlined next steps moving towards opening statements, which he hopes will be Monday. The confirmed jurors looked somber as they were sworn in, raising their right hands and swearing to hear the case in a “fair and impartial manner,” according to a trial pool report. Judge Juan Merchan said that jury selection for alternate jurors will continue on Friday and that he remains hopeful that the case will proceed to opening statements on Monday.All twelve juror confirmations came after a few setbacks, including the removal of two earlier jurors on Thursday.An alternate juror has been picked.According to a trial pool report, the details of the first chosen alternate juror are: B714, seat 18 (alternate 1).All 12 jurors have been seated. Here are the details for the last two jurors who were selected: B500, seat 16 (juror 11) and B440, seat 17 (juror 12).The jury selection has now moved on to choosing six alternate jurors.Three more jurors have been seated, bringing the total number of confirmed jurors to 10.According to a trial pool report, the juror details are: B639, seat 8 (juror 8), B423, seat 12 (juror 9) and B789, seat 14 (juror 10).Two jurors have been seated to backfill the empty spots that were left by two other jurors who were removed earlier.According to a trial pool report, the jurors are B565 (juror number 2) and B470 (juror number 4).Susan Necheles challenged the potential juror who stayed at her house overnight fifteen years ago, according to a trial pool report.Necheles also pointed to the potential juror’s husband who reviewed New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman’s book on Donald Trump’s crimes.Judge Juan Merchan asked the potential juror about her and her husband’s friendship with Necheles, to which the potential juror responded:
      “About 15 years ago, I met her through my husband, they were both lawyers at the time… We went and stayed at her house.”
      She went on to add that she has not spent time with Necheles since and would not have recalled the sleepover if her husband had not reminded her.The potential juror said that her husband was a general counsel at a company and also reviews books.Merchan also asked the potential juror if she discussed her husband’s opinion of Trump. In response, the potential juror said that they frequently talk about politics but did not discuss this particular case with him.The potential juror also said that she could be fair, adding, “I should say I work in publishing also, and I have published voices on both sides, so I do believe everyone deserves a voice.”After the potential juror left, Necheles renewed her objection, to which Merchan denied.“She doesn’t really know you,” Merchan said. In response, Necheles said that she did not remember her until her husband reminded her.“And she had to be reminded of that, yes?” Merchan said, adding, “Your challenge for cause is denied,” according to the trial pool report.Donald Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles is moving to strike a potential juror for cause because the woman stayed at her house overnight 15 years ago.Following a quick departure from his bench, judge Juan Merchan returned, saying:
      “We started the day with seven, and unfortunately we’re down to five,” according to a trial pool report.
      Attorneys are also set to make “for cause” challenges on several of the 18 potential jurors who were questioned earlier.Judge Juan Merchan has sworn in another group of potential jurors and instructed them to appear at the courthouse at 11:30am on Friday.According to trial pool reports, Merchan apologized to group for having to wait around all day with nothing happening.Donald Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles questioned a potential juror on her thoughts towards the former president, according to a trial pool report. “I don’t have strong opinions, but I don’t like his persona. How he presents himself in public,” the prospective juror said, adding, “I don’t like some of my coworkers but I don’t try to sabotage their work.” The jury box laughed in response.The potential juror went on to add, “He seems very selfish and self serving… I don’t really appreciate that from any public servant.”“It sounds a bit like what you’re saying is you don’t like him, based on what you’re saying,” Necheles said, to which the potential juror responded, “Yes.” More

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      A silent Trump glowers and stares during third day of criminal trial

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      With Donald Trump just a few feet away, a potential juror in the criminal case against him summed up the experience in just three words. “This is bizarre,” she said, with just a slight hint of a seasoned New York accent.Bizarre it was. There was a potential juror who once spent the night at one of Trump’s lawyers’ homes more than a decade ago (Trump’s team used one of its peremptory strikes to remove the juror). The microphones didn’t work. The proceedings had to start over when Judge Juan Merchan realized that a court reporter hadn’t been present first thing. And the temperature in the courthouse was so frigid that Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, asked Merchan if it would be possible to turn up the temperature “just one degree”.Merchan said no. “It would probably go up 30 degrees,” Merchan said. “It is cold, there’s no question it is cold, but I’d rather be a little cold than sweaty, and really those are the choices.”Trump also would emerge from court at the end of the day and complain about the courtroom temperature. “I’m sitting here for days now, from morning till night in that freezing room. Freezing. Everybody was freezing in there and all of this,” he said.Today was just day three of a blockbuster trial that’s expected to last six weeks once a jury is selected. At the center of it was Donald Trump. Silent. Disarmed of televisions and social media, forced to sit expressionless over a grueling long day in a drab Manhattan courtroom.This was not Donald Trump the business mogul or Donald Trump the 45th president. It was Donald Trump the defendant.Trump was far from the comforts of the White House and Mar-a-Lago as he sat in the courtroom at 100 Centre Street. There was nowhere for him to go and nothing he could say; he was trapped. It was a stark reminder of the long slog Trump faces over the next two months or so as he faces 34 felony charges for falsifying business records.When potential jurors, sitting just feet away, offered critical assessments of him and his presidency, the former president, who is known for his inability to let even the slightest insult go unanswered, sat in silence. As his lawyer Susan Necheles read old social media posts from a potential juror that were highly critical of Trump, he sat silently.Yet it would be a mistake to think that Trump has been tamed or humbled. His Truth Social account has been alive with criticism of the court proceedings, both from his team and himself. Shortly after court convened on Thursday, prosecutors said Trump had violated a gag order in the case an additional seven times; the order prohibits him from making any threats against jurors or potential witnesses.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s ridiculous and it has to stop,” Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor, said.The effort was a reminder that even if Trump is silent while he’s in the courtroom, he’ll continue to use every tool at his disposal outside it. More

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      Exclusive: Georgia lawmaker runs secret election-conspiracy Telegram channel

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      A Fulton county commissioner in Georgia has been operating a private Telegram channel for years, propagating debunked claims about the 2020 election, and spreading accusations of crimes by county employees, including Ruby Freeman, an election worker defamed by Rudy Giuliani in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 loss.Bridget Thorne, a Republican representing the relatively conservative cities of Fulton county north of Atlanta, indirectly identifies herself as the creator and administrator of the Fulton County Elections channel on Telegram, a mobile messaging platform, in multiple posts to its page. The channel uses the official logo of the Fulton county board of registration and elections.The channel, created in May 2021, had 133 subscribers as of Tuesday night. The Guardian learned of its existence from Marisa Pyle, an Atlanta-based political organizer.In a post from 14 February, the administrator of the page accused Freeman, a former Fulton county elections worker, of misconduct, despite a Georgia elections board finding that all of the conspiracy theories about her were “false and unsubstantiated”.“We clearly see her double scanning ballots,” the channel administrator wrote about Freeman, a regular target of attention on the Telegram page. “We see her incriminating Facebook posts. Yet, she is made to be a victim and given hero awards.”Rudy Giuliani repeatedly attacked Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, suggesting without evidence that they had committed crimes during the 2020 election. Investigators from the Georgia secretary of state’s office quickly debunked the accusations, but Giuliani continued to make them throughout his campaign to overturn the election, leading to a $148m defamation judgment against him in December. Freeman and Moss were the target of rampant harassment and threats because of the misinformation.View image in fullscreenThorne confirmed in an email to the Guardian that she started the Telegram channel in 2021 “initially for a private archive of events”, but said she is “no longer the primary administrator, nor do I regularly contribute to the conversations found within”. She said the channel was “made private for safety reasons (after receiving online death threats and threatening anonymous mail)”.“I have never stated that Ms Freeman committed any crime or election fraud,” Thorne said. She did not respond directly to a question about whether she posted the lines above. However, Thorne said: “It should be noted that last summer, the state board of elections provided a public reprimand and letter of instruction to Fulton county after the 2020 election specifically noting that ballots were double-scanned. My position has been and will remain that any concerns raised during any election should be thoroughly investigated.”The post about Freeman under the Telegram channel’s administrator account is dated 14 February 2024. A subsequent post in March is self-referential to Thorne: “Oh look! They must have had an earthquake in Union City. My picture along with Hall’s came crashing down in the election warehouse. Somehow in the crash, the actual picture was destroyed.” The March post accompanies an image of a wall of pictures of county commissioners – Thorne’s is the only photo missing in the picture.Thorne is one of two Republicans elected to Fulton county’s seven-member board of commissioners. She has a vote on appointments to the Fulton county board of registration and elections, election office budgeting and some county policies regarding elections administration.Pyle has been pseudonymously subscribed to the channel since its inception and saw Thorne’s posts. “After the 2020 election, I subscribed to as many election-denial channels on Telegram and other platforms as I could, to keep track of things,” she said.Pyle had until recently been the rapid response director for Fair Fight Action, a progressive voting-rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia representative. Fair Fight and rightwing groups claiming election fraud were mutually antagonistic in Georgia even before the 2020 election, a point Thorne herself has regularly noted in posts on the channel.View image in fullscreenThe Fulton County Elections channel went private after Thorne’s election in November 2022, Pyle said. Pyle, now the senior democracy defense manager with the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, exposed posts from the group on X last week after the unexpected resignation of Patrice Perkins-Hooker, the Fulton county elections board chair, who has taken a position as Atlanta’s interim city attorney.“The way in which she is consistently accusing Fulton county and election staff and the state and voters of malfeasance, she has very directly demeaned her own staff, she has accused people within the county of conspiring against her,” Pyle said.Though she can only identify a handful of other people who are following Thorne’s Telegram channel, every time Thorne posts something on the page, other election-conspiracy pages Pyle follows repost it, Pyle said. “She may have the first amendment right to do this, but that is not immunity from it causing repercussions and harm to democracy,” Pyle said. “That delegitimizes the position she holds.”The Guardian initially verified the authenticity of Thorne’s posts by examining Pyle’s device to access the Telegram channel directly.Thorne’s posts on the page level accusations of mismanagement against elections office staff and others. “Fulton Elections Director Nadine Williams and [elections board] Chair Patrice Perkins Hooker creating a hostile environment for anyone observing the polls. … why?” Thorne wrote. “Do they have something to hide? They should be rolling out the red carpet for observers.”Thorne has repeatedly called for the firing of previous and current elections office staff workers, including Williams.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter being made aware of the contents of the Telegram page, Williams said she had never heard Thorne call for her firing directly before, and is concerned about the impact Thorne may have had on recruiting and retaining poll workers. “It does make for an environment that people are uncomfortable in our department, knowing that that person is not working with Fulton but is working against Fulton,” Williams said.Much of Thorne’s ire targets temporary elections workers contracted through Happy Faces, a staffing firm the Fulton county elections board ultimately dropped, and other temporary workers. She pointedly and repeatedly noted the apparent Nigerian citizenship of an IT staffer. The IT staffer Thorne referred to is an American citizen, county officials confirmed Thursday.“Current Georgia law requires poll workers to be United States citizens,” Thorne said in an email Thursday. “I think this is a perfectly reasonable policy and I wish it would have passed last year. To that end, I think I am well within bounds to question whether Fulton county can comply with that law once it takes effect.”Thorne, a Republican, has presented in public statements her concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election in Fulton county as a nonpartisan matter, and avoided describing the election as stolen or fraudulent. “It just seems like every year, Fulton county is a mess,” she said in comments before the Fulton county board of elections in March 2022. “I just want to reiterate that I’m not here as a partisan figure. I’m just listening to anyone who will hear my concerns.”Her comments on the private Telegram channel are not so restrained.Thorne has regularly posted articles during the last three years from fringe and far-right publications like the Epoch Times claiming election fraud in Fulton county and elsewhere around the country. Between the inception of the page in May 2021 and her election in November 2022, Thorne reposted videos and articles by VoterGa, an activist group founded by Garland Favorito, a far-right conspiracy theorist who continues to press debunked claims about the 2020 election in court and the media.Thorne also sought to recruit poll workers through her contacts on the page, using claims of fraud as a rallying cry. “We are in a pivotal time in our country, and we need YOU to stand up NOW,” she wrote. “Voting is not ENOUGH. Freedom is not FREE. YOU can help end the corruption, illegal conduct, and incompetence in Fulton County Elections and restore trust and faith in our system again.”In a 21 March 2022 post, Thorne – as administrator of the channel – wrote a first-person post describing the reasons for her candidacy for the Fulton county commission: “I decided that maybe I could be more effective in fighting for election integrity by running for District 1 Commissioner. Instead of fighting them from the outside, I can fight from the inside. I can ask the tough questions. I can force them to be transparent. I hope that you can help me.” The post is followed by a link to Thorne’s campaign website.Later in May 2022, Thorne posted a recruiting document from Fight Voter Fraud, a Connecticut-based rightwing election advocacy group seeking to raise a “secret army” in Georgia to conduct research on voters the group has “deemed questionable”.Thorne rose to political prominence as an employee of the Fulton county elections office during the 2020 election. A software engineer, she was a Fulton county precinct manager and Dominion-trained poll worker who helped test and set up election equipment in 2020. She claimed that ballots had been mishandled, and before the November 2020 election reported her observations first to elections staff in Fulton county, then to the secretary of state’s office.She then went on social media with rightwing Tea Party organizations and appeared on Fox News to describe a “haphazard” process for handling absentee ballots, and to argue that elections officials were ignoring mistakes. On 3 December 2020, Thorne testified to her observations at a hearing at the Georgia state senate, the same one at which Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani had been pressing a case to overturn the election.Giuliani’s arguments to overturn the 2020 election at this hearing are one element of the racketeering case for election interference brought against him, Trump and 17 others in Fulton county.After the testimony, Richard Barron, the Fulton county elections director, ordered that Thorne and Suzi Voyles, another elections office employee who had been publicly critical of the election, not be rehired for the runoff election in January 2021 – effectively firing them. Barron’s office said the women had committed infractions like taking prohibited cellphone photographs and improperly showing ballots to a poll monitor. But Republican political figures across the state – including Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state – exploded at the firing of two whistleblowers, issuing condemnations of Fulton county and demanding they be rehired.Lawmakers subsequently appointed Carter Jones as an outside observer to review the county’s elections processes. County commissioners eventually fired Barron. Jones declared in June 2021 that Fulton county’s elections operation was rife with sloppiness, mismanagement and disorganization, but wasn’t engaged in malfeasance, dishonesty or fraud. More