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      Republicans say Trump call for Russia to attack Nato allies was just fine, actually

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      A leading Republican senator said Donald Trump was “simply ringing the warning bell” when he caused global alarm by declaring he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies who did not pay enough to maintain the alliance, as Trump’s party closed ranks behind its presumptive presidential nominee.“Nato countries that don’t spend enough on defense, like Germany, are already encouraging Russian aggression and President Trump is simply ringing the warning bell,” Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a former soldier, told the New York Times.“Strength, not weakness, deters aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine twice under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but not under Donald Trump.”Cotton was referring to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.As president between 2017 and 2021, Trump was widely held to have shown alarming favour, and arguably subservience, to Vladimir Putin.Trump made the controversial remarks at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday.View image in fullscreenIn remarks the Times said were not part of Trump’s planned speech but which did repeat a story he has often told, the former president said: “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’“I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You’ve got to pay. You’ve got to pay your bills. And the money came flowing in.”Amid fierce controversy over remarks the Biden White House called “appalling and unhinged”, another Republican hawk in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told the Times: “Give me a break – I mean, it’s Trump.”Graham, who has vacillated from warning that Trump will “destroy” the Republican party to full-throated support, added: “All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody. I think the point here is to, in his way, to get people to pay.”Last year, Marco Rubio co-sponsored a law preventing presidents unilaterally withdrawing from Nato. On Sunday the Florida senator, whom Trump ridiculed and defeated in the 2016 primary, also dismissed Trump’s remarks about Russia.“Donald Trump is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,” Rubio told CNN, referring to a Washington thinktank. “He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now.”Among other Senate Republicans there was some rather muted pushback. Thom Tillis of North Carolina reportedly blamed Trump’s aides for failing to explain to him how Nato works, while Rand Paul of Kentucky was quoted by Politico as saying Trump’s remarks represented “a stupid thing to say”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s last rival for the presidential nomination, which he is all but certain to secure, is Nikki Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump. Asked about his remarks, Haley told CBS: “Nato has been a success story for the last 75 years. But what bothers me about this is, don’t take the side of a thug [Vladimir Putin], who kills his opponents. Don’t take the side of someone who has gone in and invaded a country [Ukraine] and half a million people have died or been wounded because of Putin.“Now, we do want Nato allies to pull their weight. But there are ways you can do that without sitting there and telling Russia, have your way with these countries. That’s not what we want.”A former candidate for the nomination, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, told NBC the Nato remark was “absolutely inappropriate” and “consistent with his love for dictators”.Among former Trump aides, John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser, told MSNBC: “When he says he wants to get out of Nato, I think it’s a very real threat, and it will have dramatically negative implications for the United States, not just in the North Atlantic but worldwide.”HR McMaster, Bolton’s predecessor, who was a serving army general when Trump picked him, said Trump’s Nato comment was “irresponsible”.Another former general and former Trump adviser, Keith Kellogg, told the Times he thought Trump was “on to something” with his remarks, which Kellogg said were meant to prompt member nations to bolster their own defences.“I don’t think it’s encouragement at all,” Kellogg said of Trump’s apparent message to Russia. “We know what he means when he says it.”But Liz Cheney, the former Republican Wyoming congresswoman who became a Trump opponent after the January 6 attack on Congress, called Nato “the most successful military alliance in history … essential to deterring war and defending American security”. She added: “No sane American president would encourage Putin to attack our Nato allies. No honorable American leaders would excuse or endorse this.” More

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      Lloyd Austin to resume Pentagon duties one day after admission to hospital

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      The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, is expected to “resume his normal duties” on Tuesday, a day after he was admitted to a hospital for what the Pentagon described as an “emergent bladder issue”.A statement issued by the Pentagon said Austin, 70, had undergone non-surgical procedures under general anesthesia to address the bladder issue. “We anticipate a successful recovery and will closely monitor him overnight,” the statement read.The Pentagon’s statement added that “a prolonged hospital stay is not anticipated” for Austin and that “his cancer prognosis remains excellent”.Earlier on Monday, a US official told Reuters that Austin had cancelled a trip to Brussels for a meeting with Nato defense ministers due to be held on Thursday – as well as a separate meeting with allies for Wednesday on how to continue supporting Ukraine in countering Russia’s invasion.Austin had transferred his duties to the deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, after he was admitted to Walter Reed national military medical center on Sunday. He was then transferred to the critical care unit, according to a Pentagon statement.Austin’s health became a focus of attention in January when the 70-year-old former general underwent prostate cancer surgery and was readmitted to hospital for several days because of complications – without the apparent knowledge of the White House.Earlier, the Pentagon said that Hicks, joint chiefs of staff, White House and Congress had been notified about Lloyd’s hospitalization on Sunday. And Hicks was said to be “prepared to assume the functions and duties of the secretary of defense, if required”.Sunday’s notification about Austin stands in stark contrast to his hospitalization in January.Back then, the White House appeared to be unaware for three days that the defense secretary had been hospitalized.In that instance, Austin had surgery at Reed hospital on 22 December. He was discharged the following day but had to go back to the hospital on 1 January.It was not until 4 January that Hicks, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and then the president were notified of Austin’s diagnosis, treatments or hospitalization, all of which occurred amid escalating violence in the Middle East that had put the world on edge.That prompted a political backlash, including an investigation by the defense department inspector general. The Pentagon later said the Austin’s chief of staff was sick with the flu, exacerbating the delay in information about the secretary’s medical condition. More

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      Biden must do more to free Israeli-held US grandmother, rights group says

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      An influential Arab-American group sought to increase pressure on Monday on the Joe Biden White House to use its influence with Israel to help free a US-Palestinian grandmother detained by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank.Samaher Esmail’s family also alleges that she has been beaten and denied access to medical attention.At a briefing in Washington DC, Robert McCaw of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the detention of Esmail – one of three US citizens recently arrested by the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza – had shown that being an American was “no protection from Israel’s discriminatory, abusive and violent targeting of Palestinians”.According to a lawyer who visited Esmail last week, the 46-year-old grandmother was covered in bruises along her wrists, arms and back. She was also only semi-coherent.“The American government needs to do more to protect Palestinians, especially Palestinian Americans, from Israel’s government, and they should start now by securing the release of Samaher and all other Palestinian American prisoners,” McCaw said at Monday’s briefing.Esmail’s sons Suliman and Ibrahim Hamed urged the US government to do more to demand their mother’s release from Israeli detention and return her home to the US for medical treatment.They said if she was guilty of anything, it was of being a Palestinian American woman “who dares to demand justice and express her opinion”, Suliman Hamed said. “My mom was viciously beaten and taken into unlawful custody by the Israel forces from the West Bank.”Esmail was detained in a dawn raid in early February in the village of Silwad, according to accounts from family members. It was part of a sweep of military arrests that advocates say has affected hundreds of Palestinians since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.The IDF confirmed last week that Esmail had been arrested for “incitement on social media”, adding that “suspects arrested in the operation were transferred to the security forces for further questioning”.IDF officials did not elaborate on why it objected to Esmail’s social media activity. But a Facebook profile that matches Esmail’s name and likeness displayed an image of her smiling next to text spelling out the date of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. And at least two images showed her posing with a rifle.Ibrahim Hamed said his mother – who operates a convenience store in New Orleans and worked as a paraprofessional for the largest public school district in Louisiana – had been kidnapped, blindfolded and taken away in handcuffs. A lawyer for the woman’s family told the Washington Post she was being held at the notorious Damon women’s prison.Troy Carter, the Democratic congressman who represents much of New Orleans, posted on X that he was “aware of and extremely concerned by the detainment of Samaher Esmail … in Palestine”.“I have been in contact with the American embassy and the state department to inquire why a US citizen is being held,” Carter said.In an interview with the Guardian last week, Ibrahim Hamed said Biden’s recent remarks about the treatment of US citizens in the region should apply equally to all citizens. “We’re paying our tax money to do what – to fund the people who are oppressing us?” Hamed said. “So when is this oppression going to stop?”Concerns over Esmail’s detention come as two Palestinian American brothers, Borak and Hashem Alagha, 18 and 20, were detained last week in Gaza in a raid west of Khan Younis that has been designated a “safer zone” by the IDF, according to a family member.“We want to know more about the reasons here, and I’m confident that our ambassador, Jack Lew, is looking into” the situation and “trying to get more information and context here”, the national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, has said of the arrests.The detentions come amid rising tensions between the government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Biden administration over Israel’s military campaign on Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack.More than 27,708 people have been killed in Gaza and 67,147 injured since the Hamas attack, according to the local health ministry. Israel has also detained about 7,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners Club.The International Committee of the Red Cross has said lack of access to the detainees is a breach of international humanitarian law. “Wherever and whoever they may be, detainees need to be treated with humanity and dignity at all times,” the ICRC said.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, recently said the Hamas attack was not “a license to dehumanize others when the people of Gaza have nothing to do with the attacks”.Separately, leaks from within the White House reported by NBC News paint a vivid picture of the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu reaching a breaking point as Israel’s campaign in Gaza continues. Among other things, Biden has purportedly referred to Netanyahu in private as an “asshole” and accused him of being impossible to deal with in the aftermath of the 7 October attack. More

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      Fulton county’s systems were hacked. Already weary officials are tight-lipped

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      As a Fulton county, Georgia, board of registration and elections meeting began in earnest on Thursday afternoon, the elections director, Nadine Williams, unfurled a prepared statement about a recent hack of county government computers.“There is no indication that this event is related to the election process,” Williams said. “In an abundance of caution, Fulton county and the secretary of state’s respective technology systems were isolated from one another as part of the response efforts. We are working with our team to securely reconnect these systems as preparations for upcoming elections continue.”Any time the Fulton county elections board meets, a cantankerous crowd greets them to pepper appointees with challenges to voter registrations or demands for paper ballots or generally unsympathetic noise. The rancor of the 2020 election and its unfounded charges of vote tampering still ripple through the democratic process. Elections officials in Fulton county take care about what they say, knowing that a platoon of critics lie waiting to pounce on a misplaced word.Even by that standard, county officials have been holding uncharacteristically tightly to a prepared script – or saying nothing at all – in the days since a computer breach debilitated everything from the tax and water billing department to court records to phones.“Because it’s under investigation, they’re telling me to stick to a list of talking points,” said the Fulton county commissioner Bridget Thorne. “The county attorney drafted them.”She did say that the county had come under a ransomware attack – and that the county had not paid off the attacker. “We’re insured very well,” she said.Systems began to fail on the weekend of 27 January. Ten days later, the phones for most departments returned a busy signal error when callers rang them up.County officials either cannot or will not directly and completely answer important questions about the cyber-attack’s scope. The Fulton county chair Robb Pitts made a brief statement on 29 January about the hack without taking questions.“At this time, we are not aware of any transfer of sensitive information about citizens or employees, but we will continue to look carefully at this issue,” Pitts said. “We want the public to be aware that we will keep them informed as additional information become available.”County commissioners held an emergency meeting with only two hours’ notice on Thursday evening, ostensibly to discuss the cyber-attack. The commission immediately entered a closed executive session, emerging 90 minutes later to say nothing to reporters.Asked whether leaders were aware whether sensitive personal information had been stolen by hackers, the county spokesperson refused to say.The FBI is leading the investigation, with assistance from the Georgia bureau of investigation and Homeland Security’s cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency (CISA). An FBI spokesperson said the bureau had been in contact with Fulton county regarding the hack but could not comment on an active investigation.If this were any other county, common concerns about whether residents’ or employees’ credit card data had been stolen and when water billing would resume would be at the forefront of conversations. But Fulton county is where political freight trains cross tracks. Fulton county, home to most of Atlanta, is the largest county in one of the US’s most contested swing states.It is the subject of continuing litigation over the security of its election equipment in federal court.Last year, Georgia replaced its creaky voter-registration system with the Georgia registered voter information system, or Garvis. The state built the system on a Salesforce base. Garvis complies with the FedRamp federal standard for cloud-computing security, according to the office’s statements.A computer system that is FedRamp-compliant has monitoring safeguards to see whether unusual amounts of data are flowing out of storage servers – a telltale sign that hackers are stealing personally identifiable information.When the elections division of the Georgia secretary of state’s office heard that Fulton county’s computers had been hacked, it first cut the county off from access to the state’s computers – and then shut everyone out of Garvis just to make sure the central system had been unaffected, said Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for the state office. The state restored registration services to other counties within a day or two, after checking the logs to ensure nothing strange had taken place.State elections officials asked the county to wipe their elections computers back to the baseline, which they have done, Hassinger said. Those computers are isolated from the rest of the network, he said.“We are now back up and running on Garvis,” Williams, the Fulton county elections director, said on Thursday.Fulton county, like every other county, is preparing for the next election: the presidential preference primary on 12 March. Registration for that contest ends next week.There are no slow weeks in Atlanta. Fulton county is also where the former president Donald Trump faces criminal charges for attempting to tamper with the 2020 election. And the court’s creaky computer system is all the way down.For example, this morning, after the high-profile arrest of an activist on Thursday on arson charges related to “Cop City” protests, the media engaged in a spirited argument with court and jail staff. Arraignments are usually done by Zoom meeting with a prisoner remaining at the jail.But Zoom is offline. A judge was forced to trundle into Fulton county’s notorious jail to conduct the proceeding in person, yet the jail doesn’t allow visitors. Eventually, the sheriff relented and allowed some media representatives inside.The hack didn’t target the district attorney’s office and will not affect the Trump case, said Jeff DiSantis, a spokesperson for the office. “All material related to the election case is kept in a separate, highly secure system that was not hacked and is designed to make any unauthorized access extremely difficult, if not impossible,” he said.The office has yet to respond to questions about whether evidence stored on county computers in other criminal cases might have been compromised. Notably, the Atlanta police department said it isn’t accepting emails from Fulton county email addresses for the moment, just in case.The county’s court, tax and financial systems have been particularly affected, said the county manager, Richard “Dick” Anderson. “Our teams have been working around the clock to understand the nature and scope of the incident,” Anderson said in a briefing before the county commission on 7 February. “While a number of our key systems have been affected by this outage, it’s important to note that we have no reason to believe that this incident is related to the election process or any other current events.”Fulton county employs about 5,000 people. As of Wednesday, only 450 county phone lines were operable. The county cannot issue water bills or tax bills. For about 10 days, it could not hold property tax hearings.The county’s internal human resources portal remains down, making it difficult to hire, to manage payroll or to schedule staff.In public, the county has yet to say when it will fully restore services. Privately, officials are telling employees that functionality may not return before the end of the month. More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr apologizes for Super Bowl ad that referenced JFK

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr apologized for a presidential campaign commercial during Sunday’s Super Bowl that alluded to his uncle John F Kennedy’s successful 1960 White House run.“I’m so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain,” Kennedy wrote on social media late on Sunday. He said the ad was created by American Values 2024, a pro-Kennedy political action committee (Pac), “without any involvement or approval” from his presidential campaign.Nonetheless, the commercial remained pinned to the top of his X page, directly above his apology.The commercial – which cost $7m – was criticized by many observers. It featured the same lyrics of “Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy for me” that JFK’s campaign used in a commercial ahead of his victory over Richard Nixon.A speechwriter for another of Kennedy’s late uncles – the former US senator Ted Kennedy – said the ad constituted intellectual theft.“This RFK Jr Super ad is a straight out plagiarism,” Bob Shrum wrote in part. “What a fraud.”Kennedy’s cousin, Bobby Shriver, posted that his mother – JFK’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver – would be “appalled” that the commercial used images of her and her brother. While Robert F Kennedy Jr is a vaccination skeptic and conspiracy theorist, Shriver said of his mother that “respect for science, vaccines … [was] in her DNA”.Shriver’s brother, Mark, added in a separate post: “I agree with my brother … simple as that.”Sunday’s ad, which also described its subject as “a man who’s old enough to know and young enough to do”, aired two days after the Democratic National Committee filed a Federal Election Commission complaint accusing the American Values fund of colluding with Kennedy’s campaign.The DNC alleged Kennedy’s campaign had accepted up to $15m worth of in-kind contributions from American Values, and that the Pac coordinated activities with the Kennedy campaign “in a way that violates federal campaign finance laws”.Kennedy’s campaign has denied wrongdoing.A DNC adviser on Friday reiterated accusations that Kennedy’s campaign was being propped up by supporters of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, who is seeking a second presidency.American Values has received $15m from Tim Mellon, who is also a Trump donor.Kennedy, 70, is the son of the former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated while running for president in 1968, five years after the assassination of his brother and fellow Democrat JFK.Kennedy’s status as an independent means he is not guaranteed a spot on any state ballot, and as of Sunday was still fighting to be included by at least 10 states. More

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      ‘An extreme agenda’: could a recall end far-right control of a California county?

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      In 2022, 5,000 voters, angry about Covid-era health restrictions, ousted a moderate Republican official in Shasta county, California. The vote helped put the rural region, in the state’s north, on the map for extremist far-right politics.In the two years since, the ultra-conservative majority that controls the county’s governing board has attempted to upend the voting system and spread conspiracy theories that elections were being rigged. They moved to allow people to carry firearms in public buildings in violation of state law and offered the county’s top job to the leader of a California secessionist group.Now, residents frustrated by the county’s recent governance hope another recall will force a change. They’re aiming to oust Kevin Crye, a far-right county supervisor who has been in office for just a year.The election could be a turning point for the county, said Jeff Gorder, a spokesperson for the recall group and retired county public defender.View image in fullscreen“We’re seeing an extreme agenda coming here that we don’t think people want,” he said. “The [far-right supervisors] see themselves as having the ability to disregard laws that have been enacted by the state. They’re taking it upon themselves to disregard the normal workings of the rule of law.”Shasta has long been one of California’s most conservative counties, but it became a hotbed for far-right politics during the pandemic as residents raged at moderate Republicans they felt weren’t doing enough to resist state health rules.The anger grew into a thriving anti-establishment movement that – with unprecedented outside funding from a Connecticut millionaire and support from local militia – targeted the board of supervisors. In February 2022, voters recalled Leonard Moty, a retired police chief and Republican, from his role as a county supervisor, a move that gave the far right effective control over the board of supervisors. The body of five elected officials oversees the county as well as its roughly 2,000 workers and nearly $600m budget.Crye was voted into office in November of that year, beating a moderate candidate by less than 100 votes. He pledged to unite the county and tackle government corruption.View image in fullscreenWeeks after taking office, Crye, along with the rest of the board’s hard-right majority, voted to cut ties with Dominion Voting Systems, the company at the center of baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud. The county embarked on an ill-fated and costly effort to do away with its voting machines – before establishing a replacement – and to craft a hand-count system.The move drew national attention to the region, bringing in support from key figures in the election denial movement while offering a blueprint for them on how to advance their agenda across the US.Crye was an enthusiastic supporter, even traveling on the county’s dime to meet with Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and one of the leading promoters of falsehoods about election fraud. Lindell said he would offer financial and legal support to the county if it faced lawsuits as it enacted its hand-counting plan.The supervisors continued creating controversy. In March, the board majority made a preliminary offer for its top job, the role of chief executive, to the vice-president of a group that advocates for rural California to split off and become the 51st state. The board ultimately withdrew its offer.“There was a tidal wave of bad decisions,” said Gorder, the spokesperson for the recall group.In the spring, Gorder and a group of about 50 residents gathered to decide how to push back against the county board. They decided on a tried and true route in Shasta county: a recall.“He’s doing things he said he wouldn’t do. He violated his campaign promises. He wasn’t listening to his constituents,” Gorder said. “We took it very seriously. He was freely and fairly elected. But a recall, in our view, is appropriate when someone misrepresents who they are.”The group gathered signatures from roughly 5,000 voters in the area Crye represents. The county’s election office certified the signatures in September, moving the recall forward.Crye and his supporters have criticized the recall as an attempt by Democrats to override the will of the voters, describing it on an anti-recall website as “Gavin Newsom’s attempt to control Shasta county” and pointing to the fact that California’s Democratic governor could pick a replacement for Crye. (Newsom could pick Crye’s temporary replacement if voters opt to remove him from office. He has done so in some cases, but other times left seats vacant. The recall committee sent a letter to the governor, which was also signed by a moderate county supervisor and local business leaders, asking him not to appoint a replacement.)View image in fullscreenIn an interview with One America News, a far-right media outlet, Crye said: “You have Democrats in a very red county that are trying to usurp local control and the vote of the people here in Shasta county to get me out of office. They are lying and saying anything under the sun they can to get people to jump on.”Crye said in his official response to the recall that as supervisor he had prioritized “awareness of homelessness” and public safety and sought to protect youth.Crye did not respond to a request for comment.Outside far-right figures including Kari Lake, a Donald Trump ally who unsuccessfully ran for governor in Arizona, have urged Shasta residents to vote no on the recall.Gorder said the pro-recall group includes Democrats, Republicans and independent voters frustrated by decisions they say are at odds with the image Crye presented while running for office. For example, Gorder said, Crye said he valued fiscal responsibility but risked the county paying millions of dollars in expenses to replace its voting system with a hand-count system.Gorder is hopeful the recall will be successful, but he pointed out that Crye’s campaign is well-funded. Crye has the support of Reverge Anselmo, a Connecticut millionaire who has funded the area’s far-right movement. He’s donated $2m in Shasta county since 2020, the Redding Record Searchlight reported, including $250,000 to a political action committee supporting Crye. Still, the recall group has raised enough money – $306,000 as of Thursday – to pose a formidable challenge.“There’s a lot of enthusiasm here,” Gorder said. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of support and I’m hoping that will show itself at the polls.” More

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      Are you seeing news reports of voting problems? 4 essential reads on election disinformation

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      In certain circles, the 2020 presidential election isn’t over – and that seems to be at least a little bit true. In recent weeks, official reviews of election records and processes from the 2020 presidential election have reported findings that might be used to spread rumors about voting integrity.

      For instance, election officials in Virginia’s Prince William County announced on Jan. 11, 2024, that 4,000 votes from the 2020 presidential election had been miscounted. None of them changed the results. Those miscounts gave Donald Trump 2,327 more votes than he actually got, and Joe Biden 1,648 votes fewer. Errors in counting turned up in other races, too, with both parties’ candidates for U.S. Senate being given fewer votes than they actually received, and a Republican who won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives actually won by a slightly larger margin than previously reported.

      An audit of South Carolina’s 2020 voting records released in mid-January found no fraud and no indication any election results could have been different with the errors that were identified. But the report did recommend election officials cross-check lists of registered voters with other state lists more frequently than they have done in the past. Death reports and prison inmate rolls can help them determine who should remain eligible to voter and who should be removed from voting lists, the report said.

      The Conversation U.S. has published several articles about the systems protecting election integrity. Here are four examples from our archives.

      A Trump campaign poll watcher films the counting of ballots at the Allegheny County, Penn., elections warehouse in 2020 in Pittsburgh.
      Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

      1. Changing numbers are evidence of transparency, not fraud

      The news reports of election audits came, originally, from election officials themselves, who specified they were below the small margins that would have triggered recounts. The reports also offered explanations for what had happened and how to fix it in the future – and included statements that at least some of the problems had already been fixed for upcoming elections.

      That’s an example of what Kristin Kanthak, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, was talking about when she explained that election results that change over time aren’t inherently a problem:

      “(T)his doesn’t mean the system is ‘rigged.’ Actually, it means the system is transparent to a fault,” she wrote.

      Read more:
      How votes are counted in Pennsylvania: Changing numbers are a sign of transparency, not fraud, during an ongoing process

      2. Easier voting is not a threat to election integrity

      Erecting obstacles to voting will not prevent the problems that do exist in the election system, for the simple reason that the flaws are not a result of easier voting methods, such as early voting and voting by mail.

      Grinnell College political scientist Douglas R. Hess observed that the COVID-19 pandemic was a massive test of whether a secure election could be held with a lot of accommodations that made voting easier, and safer from the spread of disease.

      As he wrote,

      “(E)arly voting and voting by mail are targeted for restrictions in many states, even though both reforms are popular with the public, worked securely in 2020 and have been expanded in many states for years without increases in fraud. Likewise, the collection of absentee ballots – a necessity for some voters – can be implemented securely.”

      Read more:
      Making it easier to vote does not threaten election integrity

      3. It’s possible for election workers to be both partisan and fair-minded

      For many years, elections have been run by people who were members of one political party or the other but behaved in good faith to run fair elections, wrote Thom Reilly, a scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs.

      But both the facts and the rhetoric have changed, he explained, noting that a significant share of the electorate is not a member of either party – so the people who supervise elections, who are typically party members, are “an increasingly partisan set of officials.”

      Even so, many of them work hard to conduct fair elections. Yet, he wrote,

      “(W)idespread misinformation and disinformation on election administration is hobbling the ability of election officials to do their job and has created fertile ground for mistrust.”

      Read more:
      Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore

      A poll worker helps a voter cast a ballot in the Kansas primary election at Merriam Christian Church on Aug. 2, 2022, in Merriam, Kan.
      Kyle Rivas/Getty Images

      4. Beware those who aim to confuse or mislead

      Political disinformation efforts are particularly intense around elections, warn scholars of information warfare Kate Starbird and
      Jevin West at the University of Washington and Renee DiResta at Stanford University.

      Situations to watch out for are those in which “lack of understanding and certainty can fuel doubt, fan misinformation and provide opportunities for those seeking to delegitimize the results,” they wrote.

      Specifically, look out for:

      “Politically motivated individuals (who) are likely to cherry-pick and assemble these pieces of digital “evidence” to fit narratives that seek to undermine trust in the results. Much of this evidence is likely to be derived from real events, though taken out of context and exaggerated.“

      They provide a reminder to keep your wits about you and be sure to double-check any claims before believing or sharing them.

      Read more:
      5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after

      This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives. More

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      Supine Republicans don’t just dance to Trump’s tune – they amplify his racism

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      “I just love you!” Tim Scott bleated at Donald Trump.The South Carolina senator, who three months earlier had said Trump could not beat Joe Biden in the presidential election, was speaking on stage at a rally in New Hampshire.Criticism of Scott, who ended his own presidential campaign in November and later endorsed Trump, was swift.“Humiliating,” said Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader and news host. “A deeply, deeply pathetic moment,” said a fellow MSNBC host. “Cringe-y and painful,” was the opinion of The View.It was all of those things, but the self-abasement of Scott, who harbors ambitions of being Trump’s vice-president, was more importantly an illustration of how Trump remains the master puppeteer of the Republican party.The vice-presidential race – playing out in real time despite the presidential election being nine months away – is serving as a microcosm of what it means to be a success in the modern-day Republican party.In the current environment, anyone wishing to remain relevant in the GOP has to dance to Trump’s tune and kiss his big ring, surrendering any self-respect along the way.View image in fullscreenKristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, and Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, are both seen as potential picks for vice-president. They have each campaigned with Trump and adopted Trump’s racially charged language, in Noem’s case, to the extent that she has been banned from tribal lands in her own state.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longstanding Trump champion and bizarro star of the rightwing world, is a long-shot candidate, as the race to get Trump’s attention seems set to intensify.“Allies also say that while loyalty – and having a dependable attack dog who can effectively defend him – is paramount,” Associated Press reported, in a piece about the audition to become Trump’s vice-president.Beyond the vice-presidential race, it’s clear that Trump continues to embody the GOP. In the Senate and in the House, Republicans are forced to do his bidding or suffer the consequences.“I think the Republican party believes that he can deliver the voters and the party believes he is the best way to deliver the voters. He wields a tremendous amount of control over the party’s decision-making capacities,” said Shannon Bow O’Brien, a professor in the department of government at the University of Texas at Austin.“He does a lot of obedience through fear. He does have a very committed base who he says: ‘Jump’ and they say: ‘How high?’ He posts inflammatory things online and people respond and do what he asks essentially.”After Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman, voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, Trump successfully backed a rival candidate against her in her state primary – a tactic he has deployed against other Republicans who aren’t sufficiently obsequious.“The people who vote in primaries are typically the most ardent and the most faithful,” O’Brien said.“And so if you have a candidate who Donald Trump has attacked, and has said: ‘This person needs to go,’ they run a serious risk, particularly in those primaries, of having that committed core coming out voting against them.”The bending of the knee to Trump is everywhere you look.During a bitter presidential primary campaign, Donald Trump dubbed Ron DeSantis “DeSanctimonious” and suggested he might be a pedophile, while a Trump campaign spokesperson said DeSantis walked “like a 10-year-old girl who had just raided her mom’s closet and discovered heels for the first time”.DeSantis set all that aside when he dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump in January.View image in fullscreenIf Trump’s influence only extended to demanding that people praise him, it would be easier to write off. But the former president has essentially forced people to amplify his inflammatory rhetoric about immigration and race, with increasingly overt racist language becoming the messaging of the Republican party.“I have been to the southern border many times. Some of you have, too. I have witnessed first-hand the invasion taking place. What shocks me is that every time I go, it is more of a war zone than the time before,” Noem said in an address in South Dakota at the end of January.“The sheer number of illegal migrants coming into the country has made it so that every state is now a border state.”Noem added: “This issue is about preserving this great nation for our kids and our grandkids.”The comments didn’t come out of nowhere. Despite his mother, like two of his wives, being an immigrant, Trump has long demonized and dehumanized people seeking refuge in the US. Notably, he did so in December when he claimed people entering the US across the southern border were “destroying the blood of our country”.And Noem’s invective seems to have worked. Four days after her speech, Trump praised Noem – along with Scott – in a Fox News interview, when asked about who he might choose as his running mate.“Kristi Noem has been incredible fighting for me. She said, ‘I’d never run against him because I can’t beat him.’ That was a very nice thing to say,” Trump said.Others are circling too. Stefanik was once seen as a sober Republican thinker, a moderate who was one of the most bipartisan members of the House. She isn’t seen as that any more.When Trump began calling the people jailed for their part in the January 6 insurrection “hostages” earlier this year, Stefanik immediately jumped on board.“I have concerns about the treatment of Jan 6 hostages,” Stefanik said in an NBC News interview, a day after Trump had started using the term. In the same interview, Stefanik also refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election – something which no doubt would delight Trump, with whom she has appeared on his primary campaign trail.Stefanik stayed silent after Trump’s “poisoning the blood” claim, and in January seemed to adopt Trump’s dehumanizing tone when she claimed immigrants were set to “cross our borders and bleed into New York”.View image in fullscreen“When we look at Trump’s message around immigration, his message around the border, conversations around banning critical race theory, talking about crime in inner cities, he understands that America is at a very interesting point with respect to race relations. And so one way to keep the divisions alive is to talk about immigrants as if they are the problem,” said Emmitt Riley, a professor of politics and African and African American studies at Sewanee University and the chair of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.“What we see happening with Republicans is that they now understand that Trump has spoken a message to the base of the Republican party and so if anyone disagrees with Trump, they’re vilified, they’re not likely to be successful when it comes to politics.”With the back and forth over how to address the number of people seeking to cross the US-Mexico border, Trump is unlikely to tone down his incendiary rhetoric on immigrants and foreigners – invective that Riley says “threatens the very fabric of American democracy”.And given Trump’s enduring influence and control, the chorus of similar Republican attacks is only likely to grow.“What’s different about Donald Trump is he’s emerged as a leader of the party, primarily because of voters seeing him as the face of the movement,” Riley said.“We haven’t really seen a candidate who has been able to exert such powerful influence over almost everything within the Republican party in this way.“And I think that that is also what makes him a little more dangerous.” More