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      How R.F.K. Jr.’s Causes Made Him Millions of Dollars

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      In 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earned more than $500,000 as the chairman and top lawyer at Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit organization that he has helped build into a leading spreader of anti-vaccine falsehoods and a platform for launching his independent bid for the White House.The compensation was almost three times as high as the amount paid to the organization’s president, but it was not Mr. Kennedy’s biggest source of income. Neither was his family’s fabled wealth. Instead, most of his earnings around the same time came from law firms — a total of $7 million for lending them his name, connections and expertise to sue major companies.Throughout his long public life, Mr. Kennedy has cultivated an image as a man committed to a greater good, the blessing and burden of belonging to one of America’s most storied political families. Whether cleaning up rivers as an environmentalist or railing against the purported dangers of inoculations, he has said he is driven by his family’s legacy of civic duty and sacrifice.He built his presidential run around similar themes, even as his cousin dismissed the campaign as a “vanity project” and other relatives disavowed his beliefs. On the trail, Mr. Kennedy has delivered a populist message of anti-corporate rhetoric and debunked science while invoking a powerful lineage: his uncles, former President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy, and his father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy.“RFK Jr. began a career of public services as soon as he passed the NY State Bar,” reads one of the top lines on his campaign website.In a 2018 book, he credited his mother, Ethel, for instilling important values. “She tried to give us the sense that we mustn’t be satisfied with ‘making a big pile for ourselves and whoever dies with the most stuff wins,’” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “Our lives, she taught us, should serve a higher purpose.”But an examination of Mr. Kennedy’s finances by The New York Times, including public filings and almost two dozen interviews as well as tax returns and other documents not previously made public, showed that while he appears to believe in the causes he champions, they have also had a practical benefit: His crusades, backed by the power of his name, have earned him tens of millions of dollars.In his 2018 book, Mr. Kennedy credited his mother for instilling important values.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesCampaign events have emphasized Mr. Kennedy’s famed political family.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy inherited many things from his family — a charismatic presence, a gift for public speaking, a place among the nation’s elite — but not necessarily the kind of money that would support a life of both altruism and the trappings of wealth he seems to enjoy, The Times found. His grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, poured a fortune into trust funds for his descendants, helping to support the political ambitions of his sons. But Mr. Kennedy came into a relatively modest portion.Behind much of his public career has been a relentless private hustle: board positions and advisory gigs, side deals with law firms, book contracts and an exhausting schedule of paid speeches, once upward of 60 a year by his own count.While most people have to work, Mr. Kennedy did not always settle for the six-figure salary he was earning in positions with nonprofits. For decades, he has entwined his loftier missions with opportunities for enrichment. In addition to his salary at Children’s Health Defense, for instance, he stands to profit personally from lawsuits, including against the pharmaceutical giant Merck over a common vaccine for children.When Mr. Kennedy was still best known as an environmentalist, he met Alan Salzman, an investor in clean technology companies, and was intrigued: Mr. Kennedy wanted to find alternatives to carbon-based energy, “which I think is the biggest enemy to American democracy and the environment,” he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The Times.“And I also saw it as an opportunity to make some money for my family,” he continued.Mr. Kennedy would earn millions of dollars over at least eight years from work connected to Mr. Salzman’s venture capital firm, VantagePoint, including promoting a project that other environmentalists opposed.In an interview, Mr. Kennedy said that he was proud of giving his family a good life while promoting his causes.“I have been able to use the various gifts I’ve been given — education, the contacts and the value of a name that a generation in my family put a lot of effort into enhancing and retaining its value,” he said. “I’m grateful that I’ve been given those gifts and that I am able to do well by doing good.”His campaign said in a statement that he had “never put a need or desire to make money ahead of his values and moral compass.”Recently, Mr. Kennedy’s presidential bid has gained some traction. In a poll conducted last month by The Times and Siena College, 24 percent of voters in battleground states said they would support Mr. Kennedy in a theoretical matchup between him, President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate.In the campaign, Mr. Kennedy has cast himself as an heir to his family’s mystique. Yet what has at times looked from the outside like the glamorous life of a dynastic prince has occasionally been underwritten by others.Wealthy friends were behind the purchase of the home Mr. Kennedy used on the family compound on Cape Cod, records show. He had an arrangement with a major environmental nonprofit group to pay for his children to accompany him on work trips, and he accepted a free Lexus as part of a promotional event for green vehicles.“The Kennedys’ wealth is inextricably intertwined with people’s impression of the Kennedys — and that isn’t a surprise when you think their grandfather amassed one of America’s biggest fortunes when his kids were young,” said Fredrik Logevall, a historian at Harvard who is writing a two-volume biography of John F. Kennedy.“But two generations later,” Professor Logevall said, “some family members have more of the money than others.”From left: Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.; Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.; Robert F. Kennedy; and John F. Kennedy in 1939.Boston Globe via Associated PressA Grandfather’s WealthJoseph Kennedy’s estate, widely believed to be valued at roughly $500 million when he died in 1969 (about $4.2 billion in today’s dollars), was left largely in trusts for his descendants.Robert Kennedy had been assassinated the previous year while running for the Democratic nomination for president. He left half his estate to Ethel and divided the remainder equally among his children, according to documents filed in Manhattan Surrogate Court. But after an expensive campaign, he died with heavy debt, and more than half of his estate went to pay it off.While the court documents put the senator’s total estate at $1.6 million, there was more, shrouded in trusts whose value is not public. Still, disclosure forms Mr. Kennedy filed with the Federal Election Commission as part of his bid for the presidency, as well as other documents, provide some insight into his portion of the family wealth.Mr. Kennedy owns between $4 million and $15 million in inherited assets, held in trusts — the biggest, a stake in Wolf Point, a Chicago real estate development built on land his grandfather bought decades ago. Over the years, Mr. Kennedy has enjoyed large one-time distributions from his trust funds when assets were sold, according to bank records and public documents.But the trusts do not tend to generate much steady income: He received between roughly $29,000 and $90,500 over a recent 18-month period, according to the F.E.C. filing. While certainly a boon, it is far from enough to finance Mr. Kennedy’s lifestyle: At one point, a little over a decade ago, he estimated that his annual household expenses were $1.4 million.“I have never gotten a lot of money from my family,” Mr. Kennedy told The Times.He said his biggest expense in recent years was his children’s education. He drives, he said, a 1998 minivan. But he also lives with his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, in a $6 million home in Brentwood, an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood.Mr. Kennedy in 1973 with his mother, Ethel, and a mural depicting his father, five years after his assassination.Marty Lederhandler/Associated PressMr. Kennedy said that one reason his branch of the family never enjoyed the clan’s presumed riches, in addition to his father’s debt, is that he was one of 11 children, leaving him with less inherited money than other members of his generation. (When his cousin John F. Kennedy Jr. died in 1999, he left a $250,000 bequest to Mr. Kennedy.)In the 2012 deposition, which Mr. Kennedy gave during his bitter divorce from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, he said Ethel Kennedy was “broke,” and family members secretly helped cover her living expenses.“Those of us who stay at her house pay her, and she doesn’t know she’s being paid,” he said.In the interview with The Times, Mr. Kennedy said that his mother, now 95, is no longer struggling financially.Mr. Kennedy in a 2001 rowing race on New York’s Hudson River, which he is credited with helping to clean up.Evan Agostini/Getty ImagesA High-Flying LifeBy the year 2000, after a bumpy early adulthood that included an arrest for heroin possession, Mr. Kennedy was a nationally recognized environmental lawyer. The previous year, he had been named a hero of the planet by Time magazine for his work with the Riverkeeper organization, among the groups credited with cleaning up New York’s polluted Hudson River.As a lawyer, he was on the payrolls of both the environmental litigation clinic at Pace University’s law school and the Natural Resources Defense Council, where his salary was subsidized by Riverkeeper, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.That year, Mr. Kennedy saw an opportunity that would eventually net him millions of dollars.He co-founded a law firm, Kennedy & Madonna, with Kevin Madonna, a Pace Law graduate who had worked at the clinic. The firm allowed Mr. Kennedy to target polluters while profiting at a scale far beyond his nonprofit salaries. Kennedy & Madonna teamed up with other firms on class-action lawsuits against major corporations, including Dupont and the Southern California Gas Company, and took a cut of any proceeds.Although Mr. Kennedy was listed first in the firm’s name, he said in his 2012 divorce case that his partner dealt with most of the detailed legal work. Mr. Kennedy typically handled depositions and court appearances — moments when his famous name and presence would have the strongest effect. Mr. Madonna declined to comment.In 2002, Mr. Kennedy also forged a relationship with a personal-injury law firm in Pensacola, Fla. He was paid to do a radio show with one of the firm’s partners, and was listed as “of counsel” at the firm, which did some class-action environmental litigation.It was adding up to a good living, by most standards. By 2008, his jobs at the Florida firm and the nonprofits were bringing in about $400,000 a year. His trust funds and investments connected to his grandfather generated at least $150,000, according to his tax return.Mr. Kennedy with his third wife, the actress Cheryl Hines.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIncome from Kennedy & Madonna could be bumpy. For instance, from 2008 through 2010, the firm produced virtually no income, tax records show. But in 2011 Mr. Kennedy received $700,000, part of the firm’s share of a legal settlement with Ford Motor.Still, Mr. Kennedy was leading an expensive life between his home in Bedford, N.Y., a wealthy enclave north of Manhattan, where he lived with his wife and children, and the home he was using on Cape Cod. He bought the Bedford house in the 1980s, with financing from the sale of a luxury Manhattan apartment that a close family friend had willed to him, records show.In 2010, Mr. Kennedy’s household expenses reached $1.4 million. The mortgage and a home-equity loan on the Bedford property cost about $191,000. Memberships to a yacht club and other organizations ran him more than $14,000, while nannies and housekeepers cost more than $70,000. Pool maintenance was upward of $12,000. On top of those expenses, his assistant earned roughly $200,000.His use of the home at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., was made possible by wealthy friends, The Times found. It had been purchased by a lawyer with ties to Wendy Abrams, a Chicago-based philanthropist who has donated millions of dollars to environmental causes, including some of Mr. Kennedy’s, records show.In the interview, Mr. Kennedy said Ms. Abrams and her husband, whom he described as his closest friends, stepped in because he did not have enough money to buy the home when it came up for sale.The house, a six-bedroom with traditional gray shingles, was bought in 2008 for $2.5 million. For years, Mr. Kennedy paid $4,000 a month in rent. The lease, which was reviewed by The Times, shows that he had an option to buy the home for the original purchase price, which he did in 2020.The Abramses, Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition, had also footed the bill for a vacation to Jamaica for him; his then-girlfriend, Ms. Hines; and their respective children, while the Natural Resources Defense Council sometimes paid for his children to travel with him.“All my vacations are paid for. So I just, I try not to spend money,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.Ms. Abrams told The Times she commonly hosted friends in rented vacation homes. Mr. Kennedy said in his interview with The Times that his work for the N.R.D.C. could involve spending weeks in other countries, and the nonprofit agreed to pay for his children to travel to see him. The N.R.D.C. declined to comment.Mr. Kennedy also accepted a free Lexus from Toyota, The Times found. He said he received the car when he helped the automaker promote charging stations for electric vehicles in California.While working at VantagePoint Capital Partners, Mr. Kennedy took paying gigs with companies in which the venture capital firm had invested, including a solar plant developer building a project in the Mojave Desert. Ethan Miller/Getty Images/Getty ImagesA Shadow CareerIn addition to his jobs with nonprofits and his law firms, Mr. Kennedy turned to paid speeches as a big source of income. He said he could charge as much as $250,000 for a talk overseas, and at least $25,000 for others.By the time he entered into divorce proceedings with Ms. Richardson Kennedy, he was on the road at a frenetic pace, at one point giving more than 60 speeches a year. (Ms. Richardson Kennedy died by suicide in 2012, before the divorce was final.)If he wasn’t around enough to put in a traditional workweek at any one organization, his name and natural charisma certainly raised their profiles and drew celebrities and deep-pocketed benefactors to their events, including the actors Pierce Brosnan, Alec Baldwin and Ms. Hines.At the same time, Mr. Kennedy’s high-profile environmental work opened the door to a lucrative shadow career as a corporate director and consultant. His reputation, experience and wide network of contacts had value: He could make introductions, offer advice or help secure financing.A turning point had come in 2005. Mr. Kennedy gave a speech at the home of Mr. Salzman, the managing partner of VantagePoint Capital Partners, then one of California’s most prominent venture capital firms. It was an early investor in Tesla, the electric carmaker, and was known for backing companies that were offering solutions to the planet’s environmental problems.Mr. Salzman hired Mr. Kennedy in 2007, initially paying him $100,000 a year to consult on potential investments. “He was obviously passionate about clean water, but also well-connected and very knowledgeable,” Mr. Salzman told The Times.In 2009 Mr. Kennedy became a partner, earning $340,000 at VantagePoint, in addition to his other sources of income. Two years later his salary had jumped to more than $750,000, records show.“He was obviously passionate about clean water, but also well-connected and very knowledgeable,” said Alan Salzman, managing partner of VantagePoint.Andrew Harrer/BloombergMr. Kennedy’s position at VantagePoint led to other paying gigs at companies in which the fund had invested. For instance, he took in $80,000 a year from BrightSource, a developer of large-scale solar plants.That work put him in conflict with environmentalists over two projects BrightSource was planning in California. The first was set for the Ivanpah Valley, in the desert near Nevada. A number of environmental groups opposed the idea, saying it threatened desert tortoises and vegetation.Mr. Kennedy leaned on his contacts in the Obama administration to secure a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for the project in 2011. “I essentially saved the company,” Mr. Kennedy said in the 2012 deposition.BrightSource also wanted to locate a massive solar power farm in a region of the Mojave Desert, on land previously earmarked for conservation. David Myers, president of the Wildlands Conservancy, was among its most vocal opponents, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who died this fall, and officials from the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.Mr. Myers said he had long admired Mr. Kennedy’s work in New York and was devastated by his involvement in pushing the California project. “He was like a hero, in his own mind,” Mr. Myers said. After a protracted fight, BrightSource walked away from the venture.In the interview with The Times, Mr. Kennedy said he had sympathy for the point of view of the project’s opponents, but he believed it was vital to promote solar energy.Ultimately, Mr. Kennedy worked for or served on the boards of at least 16 companies, all while juggling his speaking commitments, his duties at the nonprofits that were paying him and his obligations to his law firm. He joined the board of a holding company that owned a troubled for-profit college in New York, was a paid adviser to an Arizona environmental company known for hiring boldface names and was on the board of a Florida company that made red-light cameras.Mr. Kennedy ended up on the board of that company, Smart Citation Management, because a friend knew he was hard up for cash and recommended him for the position, he said in the 2012 deposition. George K. Stephenson, the president of Smart Citation, described Mr. Kennedy as a “very engaged” board member.At least one company with ties to the Kennedy family still has Mr. Kennedy on its payroll. Marwood Group, a political research firm, has paid him $10,000 a month for years, records show.Its president and founder is Ted Kennedy Jr., Mr. Kennedy’s cousin. The company did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Kennedy said he served as an adviser and consultant.Building on his anti-vaccine work, Mr. Kennedy fought Covid-era restrictions.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesA Shift to VaccinesAround the time Mr. Kennedy spoke at Mr. Salzman’s house, he became interested in another topic: mercury in vaccines.For years, Mr. Kennedy had been warning about mercury contamination from coal-fired power plants, and he has said that concern grew to include vaccines when the mother of a “vaccine-injured child” came to him for help. In 2005 he wrote an article, published in Rolling Stone and Salon, that blamed thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines, for a rise in autism in children.Although both news outlets later withdrew the article after finding that some of its claims were wrong or dubious, and Mr. Kennedy was widely criticized by the scientific community, he dove headlong into his effort. He began giving speeches on the topic, and wrote a book about it in 2015. He did not give up his environmental work: That same year, he began taking about $200,000 in annual salary from Waterkeeper Alliance, a national organization with a mission to clean up waterways.But he also joined the board of a nonprofit organization called the World Mercury Project, which aimed to eliminate mercury exposure in many arenas. In 2018, with Mr. Kennedy’s help, it was rebranded as Children’s Health Defense.Mr. Kennedy proved to be an effective fund-raiser for the fledgling group, just as he had for his environmental allies, even selling $10 raffle tickets to win a tour of the Cape Cod compound. In 2021, the last year for which data is available, the group’s annual revenue was almost $16 million. With an impressive war chest, Children’s Health Defense has become one of the country’s leading spreaders of vaccine misinformation.As Mr. Kennedy’s focus shifted more and more to vaccine skepticism, he parted ways with the environmental groups that had defined so much of his public life. In 2017 he told Tucker Carlson, then a Fox News host, that his vaccine work had made him a pariah in some circles and cost him work.“It’s been probably the worst career move that I’ve ever made,” he said. When Mr. Carlson asked him if he was “getting paid for this,” Mr. Kennedy replied: “No, I’m not. In fact, I’m getting unpaid for this.”Except for the Marwood Group, Mr. Kennedy no longer holds paid board positions, according to his F.E.C. filing, and he reported taking in a much-diminished $24,000 in speaking fees. But his effort on vaccines has also been a source of income that would be impressive by many measures.By 2021, the last full year for which data is available, he was making slightly more than $500,000 a year at Children’s Health Defense, up from $255,000 in 2019.After writing his book about thimerosal, he returned to his publisher, Skyhorse Publishing, to write a scathing book in 2021 about Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s long-serving top infectious disease specialist who became a focus of rage for people skeptical of the coronavirus vaccine.The book sold well, more than 500,000 copies in hardcover, according to Circana BookScan. Mr. Kennedy said he donated the proceeds to Children’s Health Defense, but he received a $125,000 consulting fee from the publisher over this year and last for referring other authors.Similar to his playbook as an environmentalist, Mr. Kennedy has established profitable relationships with law firms, including one that handles legal work for Children’s Health Defense. Mr. Kennedy told The Times that because he believed his stance on vaccines had cost him income, he had an agreement with Children’s Health Defense to supplement his salary with outside legal work.“I had these big bills that I just couldn’t pay on a badly diminished salary,” he told The Times.“I said, ‘I need an opportunity to make more because that is not going to do it,’” Mr. Kennedy said. Under the deal, he would share the proceeds from any legal wins or settlements with the organization.One firm, the California-based Wisner Baum, paid him $1.6 million over the 18 months ending in June, according to his F.E.C. filing. Over the years, he has worked on environmental cases for Wisner Baum, including as a lawyer on the team that won a $290 million judgment against the chemical giant Monsanto, the maker of Roundup weed killer.More recently, however, Mr. Kennedy has been listed as co-counsel on dozens of lawsuits that Wisner Baum has brought against the pharmaceutical company Merck for injuries it says were caused by a vaccine formulated to prevent the transmission of human papillomavirus.The Children’s Health Defense website also scouts clients for Wisner Baum, encouraging parents to call the firm if they believe their child might have been harmed by the HPV vaccine.Another law firm, JW Howard Attorneys, paid Mr. Kennedy about $315,000 over the same 18-month period. JW Howard was one of the firms that handled a case brought by the Orange County Board of Education and Children’s Health Defense seeking to end the Covid-19 state of emergency that California declared in the spring of 2020.And this past January, JW Howard was counsel on a lawsuit filed by Children’s Health Defense and Mr. Kennedy against The Washington Post, Reuters and other news organizations, accusing them of colluding to stop the publication of certain Covid stories, among other allegations.Mr. Kennedy is also still a partner at Kennedy & Madonna. Between January 2022 and June 2023, he made $5 million for his work there, records show. The law firm, its website has emphasized, does not take vaccine cases.Kitty Bennett More

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      Trump Asks Judge Chutkan to Air His Federal Election Trial on TV

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      The request to Judge Tanya Chutkan was short on legal arguments and long on bluster, and it faces an uphill battle as federal courts generally prohibit cameras.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump have told a judge that she should permit his trial on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election to be televised live from the courtroom.It was the first time that Mr. Trump has formally weighed in on the issue of whether to broadcast any of the four criminal trials he is facing. His motion to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal election trial in Washington, came after similar requests made by several media organizations and was filed late on Friday.A judge in Georgia who is handling Mr. Trump’s state election subversion case has said that proceeding will be televised. But the request to Judge Chutkan is likely to face an uphill battle given that federal rules of criminal procedure — and the Supreme Court — generally prohibit cameras in federal courtrooms.Mr. Trump’s motion for a televised trial came in a filing adopting his bombastic and combative style.In the motion, his lawyers argued that a televised trial was needed because the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had “sought to proceed in secret” with the election case, even though the prosecution has attracted enormous attention from the news media, had several public hearings and had countless rounds of court papers filed on a public docket.The lawyers also used the motion to complain, as they have at almost every opportunity, that Mr. Trump has been treated “unfairly” by the Biden administration even though the election case — and another federal case in which Mr. Trump stands accused of mishandling classified documents — have been overseen by Mr. Smith, an independent prosecutor.It is little surprise that Mr. Trump, a former reality television star, would want to have the trial broadcast live from Federal District Court in Washington.As his testimony this past week in his civil fraud trial in New York has shown, he has opted to pursue a strategy of creating noisy conflict to obscure the legal issues underpinning his cases and to use the proceedings to amplify the message of victimhood and grievance that sits at the heart of his re-election campaign.Mr. Trump’s Friday night filing to Judge Chutkan was a sharp turn from his stance on the issue last week when prosecutors told Judge Chutkan, at his request, in their filing that his lawyers were taking “no position” on televising the trial.In that filing, prosecutors working for Mr. Smith also told Judge Chutkan that televising the trial was “clearly foreclosed” by federal rules.The prosecutors acknowledged that the public and the media had “a constitutional right of access” to the trial. But that, they claimed, was “the right to attend a criminal trial — not the right to broadcast it.”Mr. Trump’s filing ignored these arguments and instead relied on his usual mix of bluster and belligerence.“In sum,” his lawyers wrote, “President Trump absolutely agrees, and in fact demands, that these proceedings should be fully televised so that the American public can see firsthand that this case, just like others, is nothing more than a dreamt-up unconstitutional charade that should never be allowed to happen again.” More

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      Megyn Kelly Will Moderate the Next G.O.P. Debate, on NewsNation

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      The event, on Dec. 6, is an opportunity for an upstart cable news network to expand its relatively small viewership.Megyn Kelly, whose high-flying career as a Fox News anchor fell to earth after an ill-advised move to NBC — and then remade herself as a conservative podcaster and radio host — is set to return to the political spotlight next month as a moderator for the next Republican primary debate.The event, set for Dec. 6 in Tuscaloosa, Ala., is the fourth meeting of the party’s presidential candidates. Former President Donald J. Trump, who famously clashed (and later made up) with Ms. Kelly during the 2016 election, is unlikely to attend.The debate will be hosted by the upstart television network NewsNation, a 24-hour cable news station that Nexstar Media Group owns. Its selection by the Republican Party is a breakthrough moment of sorts for a channel that is still unfamiliar to many viewers. The channel has aggressively hired veteran anchors and producers in recent years, but its audience remains small compared with rivals like Fox News or MSNBC.Ms. Kelly will be joined at the moderators’ desk by Elizabeth Vargas, a NewsNation anchor, and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The Free Beacon and SiriusXM, which airs Ms. Kelly’s radio show, are sponsors of the debate. The event will also be shown on digital platforms and local affiliates of the CW, the broadcast network that Nexstar owns.NewsNation, which presents itself as a centrist, independent news service, has been dogged in the past by accusations of conservative bias, staff resignations and reports of dysfunction. Recently, it has added a number of familiar on-air personalities, including Dan Abrams, Ashleigh Banfield and Ms. Vargas, who was previously an anchor of “World News Tonight” and “20/20” on ABC. Chris Cuomo, who was fired by CNN in 2021 amid ethics concerns, is the channel’s 8 p.m. host.NewsNation is an upstart television network.Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service, via Getty ImagesThe network has also hired numerous former employees of Fox News. They include Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News politics editor who was fired because of his role in the network’s election night call in Arizona that enraged Mr. Trump, and Leland Vittert, a former correspondent who left the network after his critical reporting on Mr. Trump angered Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox News’s parent company. Cherie Grzech, who led Fox News’s politics and campaign coverage for many years, is also now at the network.Political parties typically team up with a major broadcast or cable channel to host their primary debates, with an eye toward achieving the largest possible audience. Last month, NewsNation averaged 118,000 viewers in prime time on weeknights, up 23 percent from a year earlier. Sean Compton, the Nexstar executive who oversees NewsNation, said on Thursday that the debate would be “an opportunity to introduce more Americans” to the channel’s “outstanding journalism.”Other participants suggested that viewers could expect a different tone. Ms. Johnson, of The Free Beacon, said the debate would occur “outside of the mainstream media echo chamber” and provide Republicans with “a debate where conservative ideas and values will be the terrain and not the target.”Ms. Kelly promised an entertaining night. “It will be the margarita of debates,” she said in a statement. “Spicy, fun and somewhat intoxicating. Looking forward to it.” More

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      Trump May Not Need a Coup This Time

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I know you’re busy writing about your reporting trip to Israel, and I am looking forward to reading all your thoughts. But, gee, can we talk about the Times-Siena poll on the presidential race that came out on Sunday? Donald Trump is ahead in almost all the critical states.Yow. Pardon me while I pour myself a drink.Bret Stephens: Nice to be home. Please pour me one while you’re at it.For readers who don’t know the gory details of the poll, here they are: Across six battleground states, Trump leads President Biden 48 percent to 44 percent among registered voters. In the crucial swing states that Biden won last time, Trump is ahead in five — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — while Biden leads only in Wisconsin. Biden is losing support from young voters, Hispanic voters, Black voters — constituencies Democrats have depended on for decades to overcome the longstanding Republican advantage among whites.Women voters favor Biden by eight percentage points, 50 percent to 42 percent, but men favor Trump by a far wider 18-point spread: 55 percent to 37 percent. (I guess that’s another definition for the term “manspreading.”) On the economy, voters prefer Trump over Biden by a 22-point margin. And a whopping 71 percent think Biden is too old to be president, as opposed to just 39 percent for Trump.Gail: Whimper, whimper.Bret: Basically, this poll is to Biden’s second-term ambitions what sunlight is to morning fog. Isn’t it time for him to bow out gracefully and focus his remaining energies on the crises of the moment, particularly Ukraine and the Middle East, instead of gearing up for a punishing campaign while setting the country up for Trump’s catastrophic comeback?Gail: Well, you and I both hoped he wouldn’t run for re-election. But he did, and he is — and as I’ve said nine million times, he’s only three years older than Donald Trump and appears to be in much better physical condition.Bret: For all we know, Biden may be physically fitter than Alex Honnold and mentally sharper than Garry Kasparov, even if he’s hiding it well. But this poll is pretty much voters yelling, “We don’t think so.” Ignore it at your peril.How about putting in a good word for Dean Phillips, the Minnesota representative challenging Biden? Or at least urging the Biden team to lose Kamala Harris in favor of a veep pick more Americans would feel confident about as a potential president, like Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary?Gail: I’m not gonna argue about perfect-world scenarios. Harris might not be your ideal potential president — or mine — but dumping her from the ticket would suggest some historic degree of bad performance. And she really hasn’t done anything wrong.Bret: Harris could well be the best vice president ever, though she’s also hiding it well. But the point here is that voters are underwhelmed, and her presence on the ticket compounds Biden’s already abysmal numbers.Gail: I’m tormented by this whole national vision of Biden as an aging dolt while Trump plays the energetic orator. As our colleagues Michael Bender and Michael Gold pointed out recently, Trump’s had “a string of unforced gaffes, garble and general disjointedness” in his speeches lately.Bret: Trump has always been the Tsar Bomba of idiocy. But too many people seem more impressed by his rhetorical force than appalled by his moral and ideological destructiveness.Gail: Why does Biden have this terrible image while Trump’s his old, fun-under-multiple-indictments self?Bret: That’s a great question. As a matter of law, I think Trump belongs in jail. The political problem is that the indictments help him, because they play to his outlaw appeal. He wants to cast himself as the Josey Wales of American politics. His entire argument is that “the system” — particularly the Justice Department — is broken, biased and corrupt, so anything the system does against him is proof of its corruption rather than of his. And tens of millions of people agree with him.Gail: This is the world that grew up around us when The Riddler was more fun than Batman.Bret: Perfectly said. The good news in the Times-Siena poll is that Trump’s negatives are also very high. They’re just not as high as Biden’s. Which means Democrats could easily hold the White House with another candidate. But you seem reluctant to push the idea.Gail: Yeah, since Biden is very, very definitely running, I don’t see any point in whining about the fact that I wish he wasn’t. He’d still be 10 times a better president than Trump.Bret: I just refuse to believe Biden’s candidacy is inevitable. Democrats seem to have talked themselves into thinking that any primary challenge to Biden just guarantees an eventual Republican victory, since that’s what tends to happen to incumbent presidents, like George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. But the alternative is to watch Biden risk his single greatest accomplishment — defeating an incumbent Trump in the first place — by heedlessly running in the face of overwhelming public skepticism.Gail: What’s so frustrating is — Biden has a really fine record. The economy has picked up. He’s gotten a huge program passed for infrastructure projects like better roads and bridges. He’s always got the fight against global warming on his agenda. He stands up firmly for social issues most Americans support, like abortion rights.Bret: All the more reason for him to rest on his laurels and pass the baton to a younger generation. I can think of a half-dozen Democrats, particularly governors, who would trounce Trump in a general election just by showing up to the debate with a pulse and a brain. Let me just start with four: Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Jared Polis, Wes Moore ….Gail: I know Trump appears more energetic, but he’s really only a whole lot louder. Either way his multitudinous defects in character and policy really should make the difference.Bret: Hope you’re right. Fear you’re not.Gail: Sigh. Let’s change the subject. You’re in charge of Republicans — what’s your party going to do about the dreaded Senator Tommy Tuberville?Bret: For the record, I quit the G.O.P. more than five years ago.As for Tuberville, who is holding some 370 senior military promotions hostage because he objects to Pentagon policies on abortion, I suggest he should have a look at what just happened in Israel. The country just paid a dreadful price in lives in part because far-right politicians ignored the degradation of the country’s military readiness while they pursued their ideological fixations. I hope defense hawks like Lindsey Graham join forces with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to change Senate rules and move the nominations to a vote.Speaking of Congress, your thoughts on the effort to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib over some of her rhetoric?Gail: Well, Representative Tlaib accused Israel of committing genocide. She’s also said that President Biden “supported” genocide of the Palestinians, a comment that was offensive to Biden while also, I think, hurting the Palestinian cause. But I wouldn’t want to see members of Congress distracted from the deeply serious issues at hand with a squabble about censorship, particularly one championed by folks like the dreaded Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.Bret: Readers won’t be surprised to know that I find Tlaib’s views wrong and repellent. Like Taylor Greene, she’s an embarrassment to her party and the House. But that’s exactly the reason I oppose efforts to censure her. One of the things that distinguishes free societies like America and Israel from dictatorships like Hamas’s in Gaza is that we stand for freedom of speech as a matter of course, while they suppress it. The right censure for Tlaib would be to get voted out of office, not muzzled by her colleagues.Gail: But let’s get back to that poll for a minute. I was fascinated by the fact that only 6 percent of the respondents identified themselves as union members. I think the unions have done great things for the working class and middle class in this country and I’m very much saddened by their dwindling influence.Bret: I’ve always been pro-union. They’re a powerful force for greater automation and an argument for free trade.Gail: Hissss …Bret: OK, that was my inner Alex P. Keaton speaking. But union leaders should at least stop to ask themselves why, if they’re so terrific, so many American workers are reluctant to join them. I feel that way about certain other self-regarding institutions, including much of the news media, that are so full of their own wonderfulness that they can’t figure out why people keep fleeing in droves.Gail: Bret, we’ve entered the November holiday season — really did enjoy the trick-or-treaters last week and was pleased to notice that the popular costumes in our neighborhood seemed to go more toward skeletons and ghosts than celebrities and pop culture heroes. On to Thanksgiving and then I’m gonna challenge you to come up with a list of things in the public world you’re thankful for.Bret: Pumpkin-spice lattes. Just kidding.Gail: Meanwhile, this is Republican debate week, featuring several people nobody’s really heard of and an absent Donald Trump. I guess your fave Nikki Haley is near the head of the pack, such as it is. Think she still has a whisper of a chance?Bret: Not sure. But you’ve somehow reminded me of a lovely poem by Adrienne Rich, which seems to capture both Haley’s candidacy and my daily struggles with coherent prose.You see a mantrying to think.You want to sayto everything:Keep off! Give him room!But you only watch,terrifiedthe old consolationswill get him at lastlike a fishhalf-dead from floppingand almost crawlingacross the shingle,almost breathingthe raw, agonizingairtill a wavepulls it back blind into the triumphantsea.It’s called “Ghost of a Chance.” Here’s me hoping Haley’s got more than that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Quinn Mitchell, Known for His Pointed Questions of Candidates, Ejected From GOP Event

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      Quinn Mitchell, an aspiring journalist from New Hampshire, was escorted out of a G.O.P. candidate summit on Friday, though he was later allowed to return.It was the type of tough question a Republican presidential candidate might get on a Sunday morning talk show, only the person asking it was 15: Quinn Mitchell wanted to know if Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida believed that former President Donald J. Trump had violated the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.Video of the uncomfortable exchange at a June 27 town hall in Hollis, N.H., for Mr. DeSantis, who dodged the question, ricocheted online. So did the pair’s next encounter at a July 4 parade in Merrimack, N.H., where a video showed Quinn, an aspiring journalist, being shooed away by a handler for the Florida governor.But the teenager said he was not prepared for what happened on Friday, when he was briefly ejected by police officers from the First in the Nation Leadership Summit, a candidate showcase organized by the New Hampshire Republican Party. The two-day event in Nashua, N.H., featured Mr. DeSantis and most of the G.O.P. field, but not Mr. Trump.“They said, ‘We know who you are,’” Quinn, who has his own political blog and podcast, said in a phone interview on Saturday from his home in Walpole, N.H., referring to the organizers of the summit.Quinn, who received a guest credential for the summit from the state’s G.O.P., said a person associated with the event had told him that he had a history of being disruptive and had accused him of being a tracker, a type of political operative who records rival candidates.The next thing he knew, Quinn said, he was being led to a private room and was then ushered out of the Sheraton Nashua hotel by local police officers. His ejection was first reported by The Boston Globe.Jimmy Thompson, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Republican Party, said in a text message on Saturday that the teen’s removal had been a mistake.“During the course of the two-day event, an overzealous volunteer mistakenly made the decision to have Quinn removed from the event, thinking he was a Democrat tracker,” Mr. Thompson wrote. “Once the incident came to our staff’s attention, NHGOP let him back into the event, where he was free to enjoy the rest of the summit.”Quinn met Vivek Ramaswamy at a Republican event in Newport, N.H., last month. Mr. DeSantis isn’t the only candidate who has faced his direct questions.Sophie Park for The New York TimesA spokesman for the DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.A public information officer for the Nashua Police Department also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.According to his website, Quinn has attended more than 80 presidential campaign events since he was 10, taking advantage of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status in the nominating process to pose questions to candidates.He said he wanted to hear former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey speak on Friday, along with the businessman Perry Johnson, a long-shot candidate.At a town hall featuring Mr. Christie in April, Quinn had asked another pointed question: Would Hillary Clinton have been better than Mr. Trump as president?Mr. Christie, the former president’s loudest critic in the G.O.P. field, answered that he still would have chosen Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, describing the contest as “the biggest hold-your-nose-and-vote choice” the American people ever had.About two months later, it was Mr. DeSantis’s turn to field a question from Quinn, this one about Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6.“Are you in high school? said Mr. DeSantis, who has faced criticism as a candidate for not being fluid when interacting with voters and journalists, a dynamic that has made for some awkward exchanges on the campaign trail.The Florida governor pivoted, arguing that if the 2024 election focused on “relitigating things that happened two, three years ago, we’re going to lose.”Quinn said that it did not seem like a coincidence that he was kicked out of the event on Friday before Mr. DeSantis’s remarks, which he had planned to skip.“They know the story between me and DeSantis,” he said.By the time he was allowed to return to the event, Quinn said he was able to catch Mr. DeSantis’s remarks. But when the governor opened it up for a question, Quinn left.“OK, one quick question, what do you got?” Mr. DeSantis asked an audience member.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Australia Sees ‘Trump Style’ Misinformation in ‘Voice’ Campaign

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      The reverberations from election conspiracy theories, until recently the domain of political fringes, could be acute, as witnessed by the United States and Brazil.The ballots should, according to the official instructions, be marked with a “yes” or a “no.” A clear and legible “y” or “n” is also likely to be counted. So is a checkmark, for affirmative, but an “X” is considered too ambiguous by the authorities and does not count as a “no” vote.This is how Australians have voted in constitutional referendums for decades. But as the debate over this month’s Aboriginal “Voice” referendum has become increasingly antagonistic and polarized, the process has come under attack.For the first time, in as long as experts can remember, the leader of a mainstream political party in the country has cast doubt on the integrity of an electoral process. Conspiracy theories of a rigged election, the likes of which have led to the storming of government buildings in the United States and Brazil, have rippled from the far right of the political fringes, raising alarm. Election officials have fought back but faced vitriol on social media.A ballot for postal voting in the referendum.James D. Morgan/Getty Images“We may look back at the Voice referendum as a turning point for when election lies and conspiracies went mainstream in Australia,” said Kurt Sengul, a lecturer at the University of Sydney who studies far-right populism. The current debate in the country, he added, was “the first significant Trump style misinformation and disinformation campaign we’ve seen in recent political history,” referring to former President Donald J. Trump.And even though Australia is not at immediate risk of experiencing the kind of election denial seen in the United States, Mr. Sengul added, “That does not bode well for Australian democracy.”The referendum, on whether to set up a body to advise Parliament on Aboriginal issues, has bitterly divided Australia and given rise to a slew of baseless claims on social media, including that the advisory body could seize property or land, or residents would be required to pay rent to Indigenous people if the referendum passed.A rally opposing the “Voice” referendum was held last month in Sydney.David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCaught in the turbulence is the matter of why a checkmark on a ballot counts as a vote while an “X” does not.Longstanding legislation requires officials to count votes as long as the voters’ intent is clear, even if they do not follow the instructions on the ballot paper. Legal advice over the decades has confirmed that an “X,” which many people use on forms and documents to indicate a “yes,” does not show clear intent.However, some pundits and politicians have suggested that the variance is unfair. The leader of the conservative opposition party, Peter Dutton, said that he did not want “a process that’s rigged.”Mr. Dutton did not respond to requests for comment. Fair Australia, which is leading the opposition to the referendum said in a statement: “We understand the rules in relation to formality but believe they give an unfair advantage to the ‘Yes’ campaign. The responsibility for any erosion in trust lies with those who made the unfair rules, not with those who call them out.”A rally in support of the Voice in Melbourne last month.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUnlike in the United States, where national elections are run by a patchwork of state and local officials, in Australia, they are administered by one independent agency, the Australian Electoral Commission, which enjoys broad trust and support and is widely praised by analysts.The agency aims to make voting, which is compulsory in Australia, as accessible as possible. During federal elections, mobile voting stations are taken to remote Indigenous communities using helicopters, four-wheel-drive vehicles and even boats.“The AEC is the gold standard for how you should run elections,” said Bruce Wolpe, who has written a book called “Trump’s Australia.” He added that when Australians go to the polls, “they know their vote will be counted accurately and they’ll abide by the results, and that’s a big deal for how this democracy works in contrast to the U.S.”The commission moved quickly to counter inaccurate claims about the referendum, responding to posts on social media, sending officials to TV and radio shows, and condemning much of the commentary around the issue as “factually incorrect.”In addition to dealing with the issue of check and “X” marks, during this referendum campaign, the commission has debunked suggestions that ballot papers would not be securely stored, pushed back against claims that the referendum would not go ahead and sparred with users who flushed information booklets down toilets, sometimes responding to hundreds of social media comments a day.But even as officials have become more assertive in fighting disinformation, their task is only getting harder.For several years now, experts have watched the political polarization and spread of voting fraud conspiracies in the United States and worried that such rhetoric would leech into Australia’s domestic politics because of the two countries’ close ties.“It is an ongoing concern that we’re seeing groups draw inspiration from U.S. politics that is highly polarized and attempt to export those tactics here,” said Josh Roose, a political sociologist at Deakin University in Melbourne.Tom Rogers, the electoral commissioner, said that after Australia’s 2019 federal election, he “really started to worry about what we were seeing globally.” His agency realized it wasn’t enough to simply run elections fairly and well.“You’ve got to tell people what you’re doing,” he said.Tom Rogers, the Australian electoral commissioner, with the agency’s executive leadership team.Australian Electoral CommissionThe commission started running digital literacy campaigns to educate voters about fake news, working with social media companies and countering incorrect claims about the electoral process online.Its strategy came to national attention during last year’s federal election, when its tongue-in-cheek humor — including beseeching voters not to draw an “eggplant emoji” on their ballot papers — drew both acclaim and criticism. On social media, the agency tries to respond to as many comments as possible — even ones that may seem outlandish, said Evan Ekin-Smyth, who leads that effort.“We take an approach of: Unless you’re going to engage in something that’s deliberately false, deliberately bad faith, we’ll give a response,” he said. “Why not? We’re there to provide fact-based information about the process that we run. No matter how crazy a theory might seem, some people believe it.”However, the agency dialed back the humor for the referendum because it was experiencing new levels of attacks on social media, including, for the first time, threats of physical harm, Mr. Rogers said.Mr. Ekin-Smyth admitted that the agency’s strategy probably would not change the minds of everyone determined to believe conspiracy theories, but he hoped that by injecting accurate, factual information into the discussion, the commission could help stop these theories from spreading further.“Does it feel like we’re pushing a boulder up a hill? Sort of, sometimes,” he said. But “if we’re keeping that boulder from rolling down the hill, that’s pretty good, isn’t it?” More

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      Fact Checkers Take Stock of Their Efforts: ‘It’s Not Getting Better’

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      The momentum behind organizations that aim to combat online falsehoods has started to taper off.After President Biden won the election nearly three years ago, three of every 10 Americans believed the false narrative that his victory resulted from fraud, a poll found. In the years since, fact checkers have debunked the claim in lengthy articles, corrections posted on viral content, videos and chat rooms.Listen to This ArticleListen to this story in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.This summer, they received a verdict on their efforts in an updated poll from Monmouth University: Very little has changed. Three of every 10 Americans still believed the false narrative.With a wave of elections expected next year in dozens of countries, the global fact-checking community is taking stock of its efforts over a few intense years — and many don’t love what they see.The number of fact-checking operations at news organizations and elsewhere has stagnated, and perhaps even fallen, after a booming expansion in response to a rise in unsubstantiated claims about elections and the pandemic. The social networking companies that once trumpeted efforts to combat misinformation are showing signs of waning interest. And those who write about falsehoods around the world are facing worsening harassment and personal threats.“It’s not getting better,” said Tai Nalon, a journalist who runs Aos Fatos, a Brazilian fact-checking and disinformation-tracking company.Elections are scheduled next year in more than 5,500 municipalities across Brazil, which a few dozen Aos Fatos fact checkers will monitor. The idea exhausts Ms. Nalon, who has spent recent years navigating a disinformation-peddling president, bizarre theories about the pandemic, and an increasingly polluted online ecosystem rife with harassment, distrust and legal threats.Voters in Brasília in October. Elections are scheduled next year in more than 5,500 municipalities across Brazil, which a few dozen Aos Fatos fact checkers will monitor.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesMs. Fatos’s organization, one of the leading operations of its kind in Brazil, started in 2015 as attention to the fight against false and misleading content online surged. It was part of a fact-checking industry that bloomed around the world. At the end of last year, there were 424 fact-checking websites, up from just 11 in 2008, according to an annual census by the Duke University Reporters’ Lab.The organizations used an arsenal of old and new tools: fact checks, pre-bunks that tried to inform viewers against misinformation before they encountered it, context labels, accuracy flags, warning screens, content removal policies, media literacy trainings and more. Facebook, which is owned by Meta, helped spur some of the growth in 2016 when it started working with and paying fact-checking operations. Online platforms, like TikTok, eventually followed suit.Yet the momentum seems to be idling. This year, only 417 sites are active. The addition of new sites has slowed for several years, with just 20 last year compared with 83 in 2019. Sites such as the Baloney Meter in Canada and Fakt Ist Fakt in Austria have gone quiet in recent years.“The leveling-off represents something of a maturing of the field,” said Angie Drobnic Holan, the director of the International Fact-Checking Network, which the nonprofit Poynter Institute started in 2015 to support fact checkers worldwide.The work continues to draw interest from new parts of the world, and some think tanks and good-government groups have begun offering their own fact-checking services, experts said. Harassment and government repression, however, remain major deterrents. Political polarization has turned fact-checking and other misinformation defenses into a target among right-wing influencers, who claim that debunkers are biased against them.Yasmin Green, chief executive of Jigsaw, a group within Google that studies threats like disinformation and extremism, recalled one study in which a participant scrolled past a fact check shared by a journalist from CNN and dismissed it out of hand. “Well, who fact-checks the fact checkers?” the user asked.“We’re in this highly distrustful environment where you’re evaluating just on the basis of the speaker and distrusting people who you decided their judgment is not trustworthy,” Ms. Green said.“We’re in this highly distrustful environment where you’re evaluating just on the basis of the speaker,” said Yasmin Green of Jigsaw, a group within Google that studies disinformation.Rengim Mutevellioglu for The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesIntervening against misinformation has a broadly positive effect, according to researchers. Experiments conducted in 2020 concluded that fact checks in many parts of the world reduced false beliefs for at least two weeks. A team at Stanford determined that education about misinformation after the 2016 election had probably contributed to fewer Americans visiting websites in 2020 that were not credible.Success, however, is inconsistent and contingent on many variables: the viewer’s location, age, political leaning and level of digital engagement, and whether a fact check is written or illustrated, succinct or explanatory. Many efforts never reach crucial demographics, while others are ignored or resisted.After falsehoods swarmed Facebook during the pandemic, the platform instituted policies against Covid-19 misinformation. Some researchers, however, questioned the effectiveness of the efforts in a study published this month in the journal Science Advances. They determined that while the amount of anti-vaccine content had declined, engagement with the remaining anti-vaccine content had not.“In other words, users engaged just as much with anti-vaccine content as they would have if content had not been deleted,” said David Broniatowski, a professor at George Washington University and an author of the paper.The remaining anti-vaccine content was more likely to be misleading, researchers found, and users linked to less trustworthy sources than they did before Facebook put its policies in place.“Our integrity efforts continue to lead the industry, and we are laser-focused on tackling industrywide challenges,” Corey Chambliss, a spokesman for Meta, said in an emailed statement. “Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”In the first six months of this year, more than 40 million Facebook posts received a fact-check label, according to a report that the company submitted to the European Commission.Social platforms where false narratives and conspiracy theories still spread widely have scaled back anti-disinformation resources over the past year. Researchers found that fact-checking organizations and similar outlets grew gradually more dependent on social media companies for a financial lifeline; misinformation watchers now worry that increasingly budget-conscious tech companies will start reducing their philanthropy spending.Such a move could “really turn the screws on fact checkers,” said Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, which is now known as X.Yoel Roth, former head of trust and safety at Twitter, said that if tech companies cut back on their philanthropy spending it could “really turn the screws on fact checkers.”Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersIf Meta ever cuts the budget for its third-party fact-checking program, it could “decimate an entire industry” of fact checkers that depend on its financial support, said Mr. Roth, now a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. (Meta said its commitment to the program had not changed.)X has undergone some of the most significant changes of any platform. Its billionaire owner of less than a year, Elon Musk, embraced an experiment that relied on its own unpaid users rather than paid fact checkers and safety teams. The expanded fact-checking program — Community Notes — allows anyone to write corrections on posts. Users can deem a note “helpful” so it becomes visible to everyone; some notes have appeared alongside content from Mr. Musk and President Biden and even a viral post about a groundhog falsely accused of stealing vegetables.X did not respond to a request for comment. Tech watchdogs fretted this week about the quality of content on X after The Information reported that the platform was cutting half the team dedicated to managing disinformation about election integrity; the company had said less than a month earlier that it planned to expand the team.Crowdsourced fact-checking has shown mixed results in research, said Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. An article she co-wrote in The Journal of Online Trust and Safety found that the presence of a Community Note did not keep posts from spreading widely. Users who created misleading posts saw no change in the engagement for subsequent posts, suggesting that they paid no penalty for sharing falsehoods.Since most popular posts on X get a surge in attention within the first few hours, a Community Note added hours or days later would do little to reach people who had read the falsehoods, said Mr. Roth, who resigned from the company after Mr. Musk’s arrival last year.“I’ve never found a way around having humans in the loop,” he said in an interview. “My belief, and everything I’ve seen, is that on its own, Community Notes is not a sufficient replacement.”Defenders against false narratives and conspiracy theories are also struggling with another complication: artificial intelligence.The technology’s reality-warping abilities, which still manage to stump many of the tools designed to identify their use, are already keeping fact checkers busy. Last week, TikTok said it would test an “A.I.-generated” label, automatically appending it to content detected as having been edited or created with the technology.Tests are also being run using A.I. to quickly parse the enormous volume of false information, identify frequent spreaders and respond to inaccuracies. The technology, however, has a shaky track record with truth. After the fact-checking organization PolitiFact tested ChatGPT on 40 claims that had already been meticulously researched by human fact checkers, the A.I. either made a mistake, refused to answer or arrived at a different conclusion from the fact checkers half of the time.Between new technologies, fluctuating policies and stressed watchdogs, the online information ecosystem is in its messy adolescent years — “it’s gangly, and it’s got acne, and it’s moody,” said Claire Wardle, a co-director of the Information Futures Lab at Brown University.She is hopeful, however, that society will learn to adapt and that most people will continue to value accuracy. Misinformation during the 2022 midterm elections was less toxic than feared, thanks partly to media literacy efforts and training that helped the authorities respond far more quickly and aggressively to rumors, she said.“We tend to get obsessed with the very worst conspiracies — the people who got radicalized,” she said. “Actually, the majority of audiences are pretty good at figuring this all out.”Audio produced by More

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      How Dana Perino, G.O.P. Debate Moderator, Walks a Fine Line at Fox News

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      The former press secretary in the Bush White House will moderate the next Republican debate. She’s managed to rise at Fox without being a Trump supplicant.Dana Perino can punch and parry with the best of them. But she could be better at ducking.In 2008, when Ms. Perino was the White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, she got clocked in the face with a boom microphone in the scuffle that broke out after a journalist threw his shoes at Mr. Bush.“I had a black eye for six weeks,” Ms. Perino, now an anchor for Fox News, said in an interview last week from her sun-dappled Upper West Side apartment.That kind of fracas — and the nearly two years she spent taking questions from reporters in the White House briefing room — may be good preparation for her next act: moderating the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday in Simi Valley, Calif.It will be the biggest moment for Ms. Perino at Fox News since she began co-hosting “The Five” in 2011. Not known for being as provocative or partisan as many of her colleagues behind the desk, Ms. Perino, 51, has spent a good part of the last decade trying to thrive as a Bush Republican working for a network where loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump is often the ticket to high ratings and the career advancement that accompanies them.Ms. Perino, who also co-hosts the two-hour morning news show “America’s Newsroom,” is one of the relatively few White House aides to make the leap from politics to news anchor. She says she modeled her transition after two other former West Wing staff members who had made the transition — George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor who served as Bill Clinton’s communications director, and Diane Sawyer, also of ABC, who was an assistant to Richard M. Nixon.Ms. Perino at her final briefing as the White House press secretary for President George W. Bush on Jan. 16, 2009.Doug Mills/The New York TimesCurrent and former colleagues said that she has managed to persevere at Fox by being neither a Trump supplicant nor fierce critic. During the raucous discussions on “The Five,” she can often be seen ducking the fray, flashing a knowing smile as her co-hosts mock Mr. Trump’s liberal antagonists.And she feels no need to deliver the pro-Trump monologues that other conservative hosts have made a staple of their programs.“If she tried to fake it, she knows people would see through her,” said Tony Fratto, a former Bush administration official who worked with Ms. Perino in the White House and remains a friend. Mr. Fratto said that Ms. Perino’s independence was something she was determined to keep while working her way up at the network.“She’s very rational and respectful of people with different views,” he said.Ms. Perino is one of the few Fox anchors to have never interviewed Mr. Trump. And she doesn’t appear especially eager to do so.When Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News over its promotion of conspiracy theories relating to Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020, some of Ms. Perino texts with her colleagues became public, revealing how little she thought of the former president and his claims that extensive voter fraud cost him the election. She said as much on air as well and told Mr. Fratto, who was representing Dominion at the time, in one text exchange how she was being threatened. “The maga people are crushing me for it,” she wrote, “and I even have death threats now.”Asked last week whether she would prefer it if Mr. Trump participated in this week’s debate — he will skip it, as he did the debate last month in Milwaukee — Ms. Perino wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm.“Sure,” she said. If she were advising Mr. Trump, she said, she would encourage him to go. But she also said she believed his absence presents his rivals with opportunities to break out in ways that have eluded them so far.She said she believed that the last debate, which was hosted by her Fox News colleagues Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, was not particularly successful for the candidates because they spent so much time interrupting each other.“The candidates made a decision to break the rules, and to talk over each other,” she said.She will not shy away from interrupting them if they do the same, she said. And she does not fear playing the role of schoolmarm if she needs to. (Her co-moderator in the debate, Stuart Varney of Fox Business, is no shrinking violet either.)Ms. Perino, the co-host of the morning news show “America’s Newsroom,” is one of the relatively few White House aides to make the leap from politics to news anchor.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I’m happy to be that,” she said, adding that she hopes that isn’t necessary. “I think that for them, they should not want that either, right, because it didn’t help them. If you think about that debate, there was no consensus of who won.”Preparing for the debate can be a thankless task, as many moderators before her have discovered. The candidates often dismiss the carefully drafted questions the moderators have written.Friends and former colleagues said that Ms. Perino has a knack for preparedness that exceeds most.“When she would prepare President Bush for press conferences, you’d go through the anticipated questions,” said Ed Gillespie, who served as counselor to the president during Mr. Bush’s second term. “A question would come, and it would be one that Dana said would come. And then there would be another that Dana said would come. And a third. And every single question would be one that Dana said would come.”President George W. Bush with Ms. Perino in the White House briefing room in August 2007, after announcing that she would be taking over as press secretary.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHer Fox colleague Greg Gutfeld, a fellow host on “The Five,” said he pokes fun at her for how she comes to the show armed with a notebook full of ideas based on the news articles that are driving the day. “Unlike me, she reads the articles. She’s like the grade-A student in your class,” Mr. Gutfeld said. “She doesn’t throw it in your face. But she’s prepared.”Former colleagues said that Ms. Perino wasn’t one to pull her punches when it came to briefing the president, which she always came to extensively prepped.“If you’re preparing the president, you have to do it nicely, of course, since he’s the one who was elected,” said Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state during Mr. Bush’s second term. “But you also have to be willing to say, ‘Mr. President, that answer isn’t going to fly.’ Dana did that. And I think President Bush respected her for it.”Ms. Perino’s second act as a news anchor puts her back where she started her career right out of college. After working as a disc jockey on the overnight shift at a country music station in Pueblo, Colo., she graduated from the University of Southern Colorado and moved to the Midwest, eventually landing a job as a reporter for a television station in Champaign, Ill. She decided a life of covering local news — holiday parades, municipal government meetings — wasn’t for her.“I didn’t see how you could get ahead quickly. And I had an ambition,” she explained, adding that she never saw herself becoming “the replacement for Tom Brokaw.” When she left local news, she said, she thought that would be the end of her time in television news. “I really thought if I do this I’ll never work in TV again.”Her first big job in the Bush White House came in 2006 when, after holding a series of communications jobs throughout Washington, she was hired at age 34 as the deputy press secretary under Tony Snow, a former host of “Fox News Sunday.” He stepped down in 2007, after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Mr. Bush named Ms. Perino as the new press secretary.“She can handle you all,” the former president told the room of journalists. Now, she is the journalist. And the G.O.P. presidential candidates will have to handle her. More