Arizona

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Biden to Create Library Honoring His Friend and Rival John McCain

      by

      In a stop in Arizona, a key battleground state in next year’s election, the president plans to embrace the longtime Republican senator and vocal Trump critic.President Biden plans to announce on Thursday that he will devote federal money to create a new library and museum dedicated to his old friend and adversary, Senator John McCain, seeking to embrace a Republican who stood against former President Donald J. Trump.After stops in Michigan and California this week, Mr. Biden arrived in Phoenix on Wednesday night in advance of a speech at the Tempe Center for the Arts on Thursday morning, when he intends to honor the legacy of Mr. McCain, who represented Arizona in the House and Senate for 35 years before dying of brain cancer in 2018.The McCain project was compared by people familiar with the plan to a presidential-style library and museum for a man who tried twice to reach the White House but never did. In affiliation with Arizona State University, the new institution would house Mr. McCain’s papers as well as offer exhibits about his life, including possibly a reproduction of the so-called Hanoi Hilton, where he was held in North Vietnam as a prisoner of war for five and a half years.The announcement will be included in a speech that is meant to focus on what the president characterizes as a battle for American democracy as he faces the prospect of a rematch next year against Mr. Trump, who has been charged by both federal and Georgia state prosecutors with trying to subvert the 2020 election to hold on to power. In a summary that it distributed, the White House said defending democracy “continues to be the central cause of Joe Biden’s presidency.”The speech, according to the White House, will focus on the importance of American institutions in preserving democracy and the value of following the Constitution. It comes after three addresses Mr. Biden gave last year about the state of the country’s democracy and will brand Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement a radical threat.“There is something dangerous happening in America,” Mr. Biden plans to say, according to advance excerpts released by the White House. “There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: the MAGA movement.”“Not every Republican — not even the majority of Republicans — adhere to the extremist MAGA ideology,” he plans to add. “I know because I’ve been able to work with Republicans my whole career. But there is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”The renewed focus on Mr. Trump comes as Mr. Biden is being pressed to draw a sharper contrast with his once-and-possibly-future rival to remind Democrats and independents disenchanted with his own presidency of the stakes in next year’s election.Months of trying to claim credit for “Bidenomics,” as he calls his economic program, have not moved his approval numbers, as many voters, including most Democrats, tell pollsters that they worry about the 80-year-old president’s age. Democratic strategists argue that whatever Mr. Biden’s weaknesses, swing voters will come back to him once they focus on Mr. Trump as the alternative.In paying tribute to Mr. McCain, Mr. Biden hopes to reach out to anti-Trump Republicans and appeal to voters more generally in one of the battleground states that many analysts believe will determine the outcome next year. Mr. Biden and Mr. McCain served in the Senate together for many years and were friendly despite being from opposite parties. Even after running on opposing tickets in 2008, when Mr. McCain was the Republican presidential nominee and Mr. Biden was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, they maintained a respectful relationship.Mr. McCain was one of the most vocal Republican critics of Mr. Trump, and Cindy McCain, the senator’s widow, endorsed Mr. Biden against the incumbent president of her party in 2020. In return, he appointed her to be his ambassador to United Nations agencies for food and agriculture in Rome. Earlier this year, she was appointed executive director of the United Nations World Food Program.Mrs. McCain will join Mr. Biden on Thursday morning along with other relatives of the senator, Gov. Katie Hobbs and members of Arizona’s congressional delegation. The president plans to use leftover money from the American Rescue Plan, the pandemic relief spending package approved shortly after he took office, to finance the new library.The library, described as a facility to provide education, work and health monitoring programs to underserved communities, will be formed in partnership with Arizona State and the McCain Institute, a public policy organization devoted to advancing issues like democracy, human rights, national security and human trafficking. More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Is Said to Have Told Blake Masters He’d Lose Senate Primary to Kari Lake

      by

      Neither potential candidate has entered the race to unseat Senator Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona.Former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday called Blake Masters, the failed Arizona Senate candidate considering a second run next year, and told him he didn’t think Mr. Masters could win a primary race against Kari Lake, the former news anchor who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, according to two people briefed on the conversation.Mr. Trump’s delivery of this blunt political assessment — which could indicate that Mr. Trump may endorse Ms. Lake if she has a relatively open path to the nomination — is at odds with Mr. Trump’s posture so far this political cycle, in which he has shown more restraint in endorsing candidates than he had in the 2022 midterms.Mr. Trump’s call on Sunday came days after a report that Mr. Masters, a 37-year-old venture capitalist, was preparing to make a second run for the Senate in the swing state after his loss to Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, in 2022.Ms. Lake, who lost a bitter contest with Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is looking at announcing a Senate campaign in the first half of October, two people familiar with the matter said. The race to unseat Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat who last year became an independent, is expected to be a crowded one in a state where the Republican Party is fractured.Last year, Mr. Trump endorsed both Mr. Masters, a political newcomer and an anti-immigration hard-liner who has close ties to the populist New Right, and Ms. Lake, who embraced Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election with particular intensity.Mr. Masters parlayed Mr. Trump’s endorsement and around $15 million from the billionaire Peter Thiel into a victory in a hard-fought Republican primary. At the time, Republican leaders resented Mr. Trump’s intervention, believing he had propped up a weak candidate.Mr. Trump went on an endorsement spree ahead of the 2022 midterms, backing several candidates who won their primaries only to go on to lose what Republican leaders considered to be winnable Senate races, including Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, the former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mr. Masters.By contrast, so far in this cycle, Mr. Trump, the dominant front-runner for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, has endorsed only one Republican Senate candidate who isn’t an incumbent, and it was a safe choice: Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, who is backed by the Republican establishment and is regarded as a lock for that seat.Mr. Trump’s comparative caution is by design and serves not only his own interests but also those of the same Republican leaders who despaired of his interventions in 2022 midterm primaries.A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said he would not comment on any private conversations “that the president may or may not have had.” Mr. Masters did not respond to a request for comment.The call between the former president and Mr. Masters was described by two people familiar with it who insisted on anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the private conversation. One of the people said Mr. Trump had not definitively ruled out supporting Mr. Masters’s candidacy and that in conversations with others, Mr. Trump had left open the possibility that Ms. Lake might not run.In a statement shared by an aide, Ms. Lake said, “I am strongly considering getting in the race and will be making my final decision in the coming weeks,” and cast herself as someone who would be loyal to Mr. Trump in the Senate. Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County is already in the race.A person close to Mr. Masters who was not authorized to speak publicly stressed that Mr. Masters “believes the party needs a candidate with a proven ability to fund-raise and campaign and is prepared to run in the absence of such a candidate.”Mr. Masters has told associates that he thinks another “bloody” primary would hurt the party’s chances of winning the seat — and that a battle against Ms. Lake would surely be bloody, according to the person close to him. Mr. Masters has also privately questioned whether Ms. Lake will run, that person said.The person said Mr. Masters had seriously considered announcing his candidacy shortly after Labor Day but that no plans were set.Mr. Trump’s skepticism about Mr. Masters long predates their weekend conversation. The former president has told associates he thinks Mr. Masters was a “bad candidate” in 2022, according to two people who have spoken to the former president.Among Mr. Trump’s complaints about Mr. Masters was that he had tempered some of his comments related to Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. When Mr. Masters said in a debate in October 2022 that he hadn’t seen evidence of widespread fraud in the state, Mr. Trump called him, in a moment captured by a Fox News camera.“If you want to get across the line, you’ve got to go stronger on that one thing,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Masters. “That was the one thing, a lot of complaints about it.” Then he mentioned Ms. Lake, then the Republican nominee for governor.“Look at Kari — Kari’s winning with very little money,” Mr. Trump said. “And if they say, ‘How is your family?’ She says, ‘The election was rigged and stolen.’ You’ll lose if you go soft. You’re going to lose that base.”Regardless of Mr. Trump’s motivations, his more cautious approach to endorsements has been appreciated by party leaders. Mr. Trump has told several people that he made too many endorsements in the 2022 midterms — including some for people who have yet to endorse him in his own race for president — and that he plans to be less involved this time, according to two people with direct knowledge of his comments.Mr. Trump has established a strong relationship with Senator Steve Daines of Montana, the chair of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm. Mr. Daines’s endorsement of Mr. Trump for president months ago was a strategic move: It gave him entree with the Republican Party’s most influential figure in the hopes of getting him to support the committee’s favored candidates, or at least to refrain from attacking them.To that end, Mr. Trump has quietly helped Mr. Daines by telling two House Republicans running for Senate — Representatives Matt Rosendale of Montana and Alex Mooney of West Virginia — that he would not endorse them in Senate primaries in their states. In West Virginia, Mr. Daines has issued a statement supportive of a different candidate: the state’s governor, Jim Justice.A person with direct knowledge confirmed those conversations, adding that part of Mr. Trump’s motivation for delivering the messages was his anger at the anti-tax Club for Growth, a one-time ally that more recently has attacked him. The Club for Growth is spending money to support Mr. Mooney and potentially could do the same for Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Trump’s conversations with Mr. Rosendale and Mr. Mooney were first reported by CNN.A spokesman for Mr. Rosendale could not be reached for comment.In a statement attacking Mr. Justice as part of the “big-spending D.C. swamp uniparty,” Mr. Mooney’s campaign manager, John Findlay, noted that “the congressman has endorsed President Trump and would of course like to have his endorsement again.” He added, “As of now, President Trump has chosen to stay neutral.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Man Pleads Guilty to Sending Bomb Threat to Arizona Election Official

      by

      The man made the threat online and searched for the official’s address and name with the words “how to kill,” according to prosecutors.A Massachusetts man who searched online for an Arizona election official’s address and name along with the words “how to kill” pleaded guilty on Friday to making a bomb threat to the official, the U.S. Justice Department said.The man, James W. Clark, 38, of Falmouth, Mass., sent the threat on Feb. 14, 2021, by using a contact form on the website for the Arizona Secretary of State’s election division, prosecutors said.The message was addressed to the official, who is not named in public court documents, and said the official needed “to resign by Tuesday February 16th by 9 am or the explosive device impacted in her personal space will be detonated.”Prosecutors said Mr. Clark also searched a few days later for information about the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three people in 2013.When Mr. Clark made the threat, Arizona’s secretary of state was Katie Hobbs, who is now the governor.After Mr. Clark was arrested in July 2022, Ms. Hobbs’s office told reporters that she was the target of the bomb threat and that it was one of thousands of threats she received after the 2020 presidential election.Ms. Hobbs’s office could not immediately be reached for comment on Sunday. Mr. Clark’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Threats against election workers and officials increased after former President Donald J. Trump spread the lie that fraud had cost him the 2020 presidential election.In Arizona, which Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by a little over 10,000 votes, politicians and other conspiracy theorists aligned with Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that the election was marred fraud.A review of the election by Mark Brnovich, a Republican who served as Arizona’s attorney general until January, which was released by his Democratic successor in February, discredited the numerous claims of problems.Scholars who study political violence say threats of political violence, and actual attacks, have become more common because of a heightened use of dehumanizing and apocalyptic language, particularly by right-wing politicians and media.The U.S. attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, said in a statement about Mr. Clark’s guilty plea that the Justice Department was investigating and prosecuting illegal acts against election officials and workers.“Americans who serve the public by administering our voting systems should not have to fear for their lives simply for doing their jobs,” Mr. Garland said.Mr. Clark pleaded guilty to one count of making a threatening interstate communication and faces a maximum of five years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 26.The F.B.I. field office in Phoenix is investigating Mr. Clark’s case with help from the F.B.I. field office in Boston.The investigation is part of the Election Threats Task Force, a group started by the Justice Department in June 2021 to address threats against election workers.One in six local election officials has personally experienced threats, according to a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice conducted online in January and February of 2022, and nearly a third of the officials said they knew an election worker who had left the job at least in part because of safety concerns, threats or intimidation. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Pitches Manufacturing Boom on Southwest Tour

      by

      During a stop in New Mexico, the president highlighted how one of his signature pieces of legislation will benefit blue-collar workers.President Biden on Wednesday entered a wind tower manufacturing plant surrounded by desert boasting of declining unemployment, waning inflation and a manufacturing boom — all metrics that should make his three-state Southwest tour a victory lap.“Our plan is working,” Mr. Biden said, referring to his economic agenda. “When I think climate, I think jobs.”But hours before he entered Belen, the president reflected on the challenge hanging over the White House during his tour of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Even as he traverses the country to promote his economic policies, many voters are still skeptical of — or unclear on — Mr. Biden’s legislative record.He addressed the issue of voter sentiment during a fund-raiser at a private residence shortly after arriving in Albuquerque on Tuesday night.Noting recent infrastructure projects funded by his policies, Mr. Biden said: “They’re beginning to realize what we actually passed is having an impact. It’s just going to take a little while.”White House officials are hoping tours around the nation like Mr. Biden is doing this week can change that. As extreme weather rages across the country, the White House has framed one of its signature pieces of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, as both a means to improve environmental justice and a source of manufacturing jobs for wind and solar.A day after seeking to galvanize environmental activists by designating a fifth national monument near the Grand Canyon on Tuesday, Mr. Biden traded talk of conservation for remarks focused on “renewable manufacturing” that can provide “high-paying jobs and dignity to the people who have long been waiting for that.”Mr. Biden talking to Ed Keable, the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, on Tuesday.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe president pointed to the company hosting him, Arcosa Wind Towers Inc., which received $1.1 billion of new orders for wind tower equipment after the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to the White House.The message most likely resonated with people in New Mexico, where many rural communities are still focused more on job growth rooted in energy production than the fight against climate change, according to Brian Sanderoff, the president of New Mexico-based Research & Polling Inc. But it has not broken through to the nation at large, according to recent surveys.Mr. Biden remains broadly unpopular among a voting public that is pessimistic about the country’s future, and his approval rating is just 39 percent, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. That survey found him in a neck-and-neck tie with former President Donald J. Trump.The poll did find that more Americans think the economy is in excellent or good shape: 20 percent, compared with 10 percent a year ago.On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, defended the administration’s messaging strategy, saying on CNN that “polls don’t tell the entire story.” She then indicated that the public would see more trips like Mr. Biden’s current swing through the Southwest.The president will be “talking directly to the American people about how wages are actually going up, about how inflation is going down over a long, extended period of time,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.In the weeks ahead, however, Mr. Biden must convince Americans that they will feel the impact of provisions of his infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductor packages — even if much of the funding may not be spent for years to come.“People live through day-to-day challenges of the economy,” Mr. Sanderoff said. “You can tout big legislation, comprehensive legislation that you passed through Congress, but people are busy getting their kids through school and dealing with the cost of bread.”Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a center-left think tank, said the way Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments have dominated Americans’ attention lately makes it even more important for Mr. Biden to travel to small markets and speak directly to the American people.“People have to begin to feel it in their life or understand what the president has done,” Mr. Bennett said. “That takes time.”During his visit to the wind tower facility on Wednesday, Mr. Biden appeared to agree.“I’m not here to declare victory on the economy,” he said. “We have a lot more work to do.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      With National Monument Designation, Biden Tries to Balance Electoral Realities

      by

      The president has highlighted his climate actions as a way to spur domestic energy production and create blue-collar jobs, while nodding to environmental activists and tribal leaders.The president designated nearly a million acres of land in Red Butte, Ariz., as a national monument.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAfter spending most of his appearance near the Grand Canyon describing how his fifth national monument designation would preserve sagebrush, bighorn sheep and 450 kinds of birds, President Biden said on Tuesday that protecting the land long held sacred by Native American leaders was not just a matter of the environment.“By creating this monument, we’re setting aside new spaces for families to bike, hunt, fish and camp, growing the tourism economy,” Mr. Biden said as he declared nearly a million acres near the Grand Canyon as a national monument, with the 300-million-year-old “majestic red cliffs” serving as his backdrop.“Preserving these lands is good not only for Arizona, but for the planet,” he said. “It’s good for the economy.”Mr. Biden has often framed his climate investments as a means to spur domestic energy production, one that would create thousands of jobs for blue-collar workers. But when he traveled to Arizona to announce a permanent ban on uranium mining in the area, he also nodded to other crucial constituencies: environmental activists and tribal leaders who have pressed the White House to make good on its ambitious campaign promises to protect the environment and ancestral homelands.The White House has presented Mr. Biden’s sales pitch for legislation aimed at cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the Inflation Reduction Act, as a job-growth machine to appeal to the middle class. But the administration knows that those who care about protecting the environment and preserving lands stripped from tribal nations are crucial voters, particularly in the battleground state of Arizona.The balancing act was reflected during Mr. Biden’s visit to the mountainous range of Red Butte near the Grand Canyon, where he spoke of job creation while also acknowledging environmental activists and tribal leaders.Indigenous people, Mr. Biden said, “fought for decades to be able to return to these lands to protect these lands from mining and development to clear them of contamination to preserve their shared legacy.”The Biden administration has argued that the Grand Canyon region contains just about 1.3 percent of the country’s uranium reserves.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe White House hopes Mr. Biden’s message is received by not just Native Americans but also young and climate-conscious voters, many of whom have yet to be fired up by his economy-first message.About 71 percent of Americans say they have heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the Inflation Reduction Act one year after it was signed, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. And most Americans — 57 percent — disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of climate change, according to the poll. Recent polls also show that voter sentiment on the economy continues to drive the president’s negative approval ratings.Mr. Biden has been inconsistent in his efforts to protect federal lands and waters. This year he approved the Willow project, a large oil-drilling development in the pristine Arctic wilderness. The administration also approved more oil and gas permits in its first two years than President Donald J. Trump did in his, and agreed to a series of compromises in the Inflation Reduction Act, Mr. Biden’s signature climate law, to allow offshore oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet.“It’s a pick-your-battle environment,” said Joel Clement, a former policy director at the Interior Department.Mr. Clement, who is now a senior program officer at the Lemelson Foundation, a philanthropic group funding work on climate change, said he believed the Biden administration was intent on protecting Indigenous lands and culture, and also on blocking as much fossil fuel production as it could.But, he said, “The calculus revolves around how much damage they can weather from the right on each of these things.”The Biden administration needs to amp up its climate change messaging as campaign season heats up, said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which has conducted surveys on Americans’ climate opinions since 2007.While the message about jobs and the economy might be a winning strategy in a general election, Mr. Leiserowitz said Mr. Biden’s base of climate-focused voters wanted to see the president use the bully pulpit to talk more about replacing fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.“They have more teachable moments to talk about climate change with the American people than any other president in history because we are getting hit every day by another two-by-four of climate extremes on steroids,” Mr. Leiserowitz said.Mr. Biden leaned into that message on Tuesday, describing his efforts to combat the effects of climate change, including investing $720 million for Native American communities to ease the impact of droughts and rising sea levels. Standing before an Arizona delegation as well as tribal leaders donning traditional attire, Mr. Biden framed the Inflation Reduction Act as the biggest investment in climate conservation and environmental justice on record.But his announcement also highlighted the risks Mr. Biden faces as he seeks to conserve lands while also promoting the expansion of clean energy. Uranium is a fuel most widely used for nuclear plants, a key source of energy that does not produce carbon dioxide emissions.As countries work to curb planet-warming greenhouse gasses, competition for uranium is expected to increase, according to experts. The United States imports the majority of its uranium, from Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia and Russia.Paul Goranson, the chief executive of enCore Energy, which has mining claims in the Grand Canyon area, said the uranium found there is of a higher grade than in other parts of the United States. Cutting off that supply, he said, will keep the United States reliant on imports, which could have an impact on national security and hurt the Biden administration’s ability to develop zero-emissions energy sources to fight climate change.“It seems the timing is a bit inconsistent with the president’s objectives for clean energy,” Mr. Goranson said. “It doesn’t seem to be aligning with his stated clean energy targets.”The Biden administration has argued that the Grand Canyon region contains just about 1.3 percent of the country’s uranium reserves. Environmental groups also noted that because the area was under a 20-year moratorium imposed during the Obama administration, no mining would have occurred for at least a decade anyway.Republicans blasted Mr. Biden’s decision this week. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a supporter of nuclear energy, accused the president of “supporting our enemies” by blocking uranium production. American companies currently pay around $1 billion a year to Russia’s state-owned nuclear agency to buy uranium.The White House’s balancing act of framing its agenda as a boon to domestic investment and job growth, as well as a way to combat climate change and advance environmental justice, will continue throughout the re-election campaign, according to senior White House officials. After Mr. Biden was endorsed by the four largest environmental groups in the United States in June, the president celebrated days later at a rally for union workers.“The investment isn’t only going to help us save the planet, it’s going to create jobs — lots of jobs, tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs,” Mr. Biden reminded A.F.L.-C.I.O. members at the rally in Philadelphia.That strategy was evident on Tuesday. As Mr. Biden talked about the importance of protecting the country’s natural wonders, Vice President Kamala Harris joined Labor Department officials in Philadelphia to speak to construction workers about efforts to raise their wages.And after the event at the Grand Canyon, Mr. Biden traveled to Albuquerque, where he will describe how his signature climate and clean energy bill also creates manufacturing jobs in the clean energy sector.A group gathered to see President Biden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesJohn Leshy, a public lands expert who served in the Interior Department during the Clinton and the Carter administrations, said trade-offs between developing renewable energy to fight climate change and conserving and protecting public lands will only increase in the years to come.“We’ve got a catastrophe in the offing if we don’t move rapidly to decarbonize,” Mr. Leshy said. “I don’t think that means opening up the Grand Canyon to uranium mining everywhere, but in some situations it does mean we’re going to have to grit our teeth” to allow for more minerals development, he said.For Carletta Tilousi, a member of the Havasupai Tribe, Mr. Biden’s monument designation means that her ancestors “are finally going to be feeling rested.”“A lot of these areas are in places where there were once gathering sites of tribal people and many years ago, hundred years ago, where our ancestors once roamed and we still roam today here,” she said. “But I believe those areas are very important to our existence.” More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Man Who Threatened Arizona Election Officials Gets More Than 3 Years in Prison

      by

      The man called for a mass shooting of poll workers and also threatened the families of two county officials, saying that someone needed to get “these people and their children.”A man who called for a “mass shooting of poll workers” and threatened two Arizona county officials and their families over the 2022 election was sentenced on Thursday to three and a half years in federal prison, prosecutors said.The man, Frederick Francis Goltz, 52, pleaded guilty in April to two counts of interstate threatening communications in connection with his threats to two Republican Maricopa County officials in Arizona, the authorities said: Stephen Richer, the county recorder, and Tom Liddy, the county attorney’s civil division chief.Mr. Goltz, who is a Canadian citizen and lived in Lubbock, Texas, believed in 2022 that rampant voter fraud was occurring in Arizona, prosecutors said, so he resorted to online threats, saying in a post on a right-wing forum site that referred to Maricopa County officials: “Someone needs to get these people AND their children. The children are the most important message to send.”His threats continued for weeks. He wrote in an online forum that he was “willing to take lives” in order to fend off a “tyrannical government,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas said in a statement.Mr. Richer said in a statement read aloud by a prosecutor on Thursday that while he had been the person directly threatened in the case, “the impact of such threats is felt by a much larger community: the thousands of committed election workers who operate our democratic processes.”Mr. Liddy testified during the sentencing hearing that his wife and his four children were assigned round-the-clock protection and given body armor in response to Mr. Goltz’s threats.Mr. Goltz’s lawyer, Michael L. King, did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment on Friday. The two election officials who were targeted also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The case has highlighted how right-wing skepticism of election results has often fueled threats against election officials, particularly in battleground states. Such animosity has prompted several beleaguered officials across the country to resign from their election posts.The case also underscores the dangerous effect that online disinformation has had, as aggrieved social media posts call for threatening actions with real-world consequences.In November 2022, shortly after the midterms, Mr. Goltz posted threats to poll election workers on Patriots.win under the name “FreeSpeechMaster,” according to a criminal complaint. That month, he also posted Mr. Liddy’s home address, telephone number and commented that “it would be a shame if someone got to” his children, the complaint states.On Nov. 23, 2022, Mr. Goltz noted in a post that Mr. Richer had a wife but wasn’t sure if he had children, the complaint states.“Kids are off limits,” one user replied.“No,” Mr. Goltz replied, according to court documents. “NOTHING is off limits.”He then said that he wished someone would “send a message” to Arizona by going after Mr. Richer’s children.Later that year, on Dec. 1, Mr. Goltz wrote he was “willing to take lives” and that the children were “not off limits, either,” the complaint states.The F.B.I. shared the posts with Mr. Liddy, who told the agency that he felt “afraid for himself and his family,” prosecutors said.Dr. Yotam Ophir, a professor of communication at the University at Buffalo who researches misinformation, said by phone on Friday that former President Donald J. Trump is responsible for almost all election fraud misinformation, which he has amplified for years, particularly after losing the 2020 presidential election.“In the past, we had a hope that inciteful, violent, hate-driven misinformation online would stay online,” Dr. Ophir said. “But I think in recent years, unfortunately, it’s becoming clear that what starts in the dark corners of the internet, it doesn’t stay there.”He said it appeared that the legal system and the intelligence community were beginning to realize “the massive threat that online digital environments can have toward democracy.”The man who attacked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband last year appeared to have a copious online presence as he shared angry and paranoid postings on a blog. Nearly three-quarters of people across 19 countries believe that the spread of false information online is a “major threat,” according to a survey released by the Pew Research Center last year.“In recent years, it became clearer that people who are being radicalized online, especially on the far-right, pose a real threat,” Dr. Ophir said. “And again, it doesn’t end online.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Kari Lake’s vow to defend Trump with guns threatens democracy, Democrat says

      by

      The Arizona Republican Kari Lake’s vow of armed resistance over Donald Trump’s indictment for retaining classified records “threatens the very core of our democracy”, an Arizonan Democratic congressman said.Ruben Gallego is running to replace the former Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the US Senate next year.He said: “I know this language isn’t just hyperbole – it’s dangerous and it threatens the very core of our democracy.”The 38-count federal indictment against Trump was unsealed on Friday. He is due to appear in court in Florida on Tuesday. Jack Smith, the special counsel, told reporters he would “seek a speedy trial”.Trump was already in unprecedented legal jeopardy. He and other Republicans responded to the indictment under the Espionage Act with incendiary rhetoric.Lake, a TV news anchor turned far-right firebrand, lost the election for Arizona governor last year. She continues to insist without evidence her defeat was the result of fraud.Speaking to Georgia Republicans on Friday, she said: “I have a message tonight for [US attorney general] Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, and Joe Biden. And the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one’s for you.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me.“And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA [National Rifle Association]. That’s not a threat – that’s a public service announcement.“We will not let you lay a finger on President Trump. Frankly, now is the time to cling to our guns and our religion.”Lake was speaking in place of Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president who escaped the mob Trump sent to the Capitol on January 6, some of whom chanted about hanging him, to preside over certification of Biden’s election win.Pence is now a candidate for the Republican nomination but like all others he trails Trump by large margins, as the former president ruthlessly capitalises on – and successfully monetises – the various charges against him.Trump faces criminal charges at state level, in New York, over a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and federally, over his retention of classified records and obstruction of moves to secure their return.In a New York civil trial, found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, he was ordered to pay $5m.Also expected to be indicted over his election subversion, at state level in Georgia and federally in an investigation also supervised by Smith, Trump denies wrongdoing.According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lake’s remarks in Columbus on Friday met with a standing ovation.Responding to a reporter, Lake tweeted: “I meant what I said.”Gallego said: “As a marine who went all the way to Iraq to defend this country, our democracy, and our freedoms, I know this language isn’t just hyperbole – it’s dangerous and it threatens the very core of our democracy.”He also said Lake “owes every America-loving Arizonan an apology”, as the state had rejected “her off-the-rails rhetoric that does nothing but sow doubt in our elections”.But Lake remains an eager Trump ally, seen by some as a possible pick for vice-president. On Friday, she said she was “more than willing to fill Mike Pence’s shoes”.Like Trump, who features on a song splicing his voice with those of imprisoned Capitol rioters, Lake has released a single. Its title, 81 Million Votes My Ass, is a reference to Biden’s winning total. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Ron DeSantis Defends Migrant Flights While Taking Shot at Gavin Newsom

      by

      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida criticized immigration policies in his first visit to the border since beginning his presidential bid.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Wednesday defended his state’s sending three dozen Latin American migrants to Sacramento on recent charter flights from the border, saying California had “incentivized” illegal immigration and ought to pay the costs.“These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem, because they have endorsed and agitated for these types of open-border policies,” Mr. DeSantis said during his first visit to the southern border since starting his presidential campaign. “They have bragged that they are sanctuary jurisdictions. They attacked the previous administration’s efforts to try to have border security.”Democratic officials in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have said Florida’s taxpayer-funded operation to move migrants to Sacramento could merit criminal or civil charges. They said the migrants, who arrived on Monday and last Friday, were misled into boarding the planes with false promises of jobs before being left outside a church building. In criticizing the flights, Mr. Newsom resorted to unusually personal terms, calling Mr. DeSantis a “small, pathetic man.”On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis took a shot back at Mr. Newsom, comparing California’s budget deficit to his own state’s fiscal surplus. “We have a good managed state,” he said at a round-table discussion in Sierra Vista, Ariz., that included law enforcement officials from Florida, Arizona and Texas. Mr. DeSantis was appearing in his official capacity as governor.Mr. DeSantis has staked out a hard-line position on immigration in the Republican primary, criticizing the policies of both President Biden and, to a lesser extent, former president Donald J. Trump, his main rival for the nomination.“The border just needs to be shut down,” said Mr. DeSantis, who is making a fund-raising trip to Texas this week. He also reiterated his support for a border wall, adding: “Mass migration just doesn’t work.”Last month, Mr. DeSantis authorized sending more than 1,100 Florida National Guard members and law enforcement personnel to Texas to serve at the southern border. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, had requested the assistance. Mr. DeSantis led a similar effort in 2021, when he also made a public appearance at the border.While border apprehensions have hit record highs in recent years, illegal crossings between ports of entry along the southern border have decreased more than 70 percent since May 11, when Title 42, the pandemic-era health measure, was lifted, according to statistics from Customs and Border Protection.After Mr. DeSantis’s comments in Arizona, sheriffs took turns describing crimes that they said had been committed by undocumented immigrants.At times, the conversation felt like a campaign event, as the assembled officials, mainly Republicans, praised Mr. DeSantis.“I’ve worked for a lot of governors,” said Grady Judd, sheriff of Polk County in Central Florida. “Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it: This is simply the best governor that the state of Florida has had in the last 50 years.”Miriam Jordan More