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      As Midterm Campaign Norms Erode, Even Debates Are Under Debate

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      Candidates for senator or governor routinely used to participate in two or three debates. Now some are skipping them altogether. Retail politicking at diners and state fairs is no longer the cliché it was for generations. And town-hall-style meetings, where citizens get to question their elected leaders and those running to replace them, have given way to the online echo chamber.In midterm campaigns across the country, direct political engagement has been falling away, victim to security concerns, pandemic-era workarounds and Republican hostility to the mainstream media.Many candidates are sticking instead to safer spaces: partisan news outlets, fund-raisers with supporters, friendly local crowds. The result is a profound shift in the long traditions of American campaigns that is both a symptom of and a contributor to the ills afflicting the country’s politics.Campaigning used to force candidates to engage up close with the public, exposing them not only to supporters but to those who might disagree with them. Avoiding those tougher interactions cuts down on the opportunities for candidates’ characters and limitations to be revealed, and for elected officials to be held accountable to those who elected them. For the politicians, it creates an artificial environment where their positions appear uniformly popular and opposing views are angrily denounced, making compromise seem risky.“They run these campaigns in bubbles to these voters who are in bubbles,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a moderate Republican who won seven terms in Congress in a Northern Virginia district and headed his party’s congressional campaign committee.Mr. Davis said he felt “a duty” as a lawmaker to participate in debates and town-hall meetings. “People don’t feel that duty anymore,” he added. “When they say, ‘I went home and talked to my constituents,’ they are talking to their base.”Nowhere is the trend clearer than on the country’s shrinking debate stage. Candidates in 10 of the most competitive contests for Senate and governor have agreed to just one debate, where voters not long ago could have expected to watch two or three. Those debates have already happened in Senate races in Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Wisconsin and in the Texas and Wisconsin governor’s races.Only in five contests — the Senate race in Ohio and governor’s races in Georgia, Kansas, Maine and Oregon — have the candidates agreed to multiple meetings.In at least four other competitive contests, the candidates failed to agree to any debates at all.In Arizona, Katie Hobbs, the Democrat running for governor, flatly declines to debate her Republican opponent. In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor, has rejected debates run by news organizations, citing what he called their “hidden partisan agenda.” In Missouri, the Republican nominee for Senate, Eric Schmitt, accused his opponent of refusing to debate. Ten days later, he failed to show for the first general election matchup.And in Nevada, the major-party candidates for Senate agreed in principle to a televised face-off, but none has happened, because they couldn’t agree on the forum.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Georgia Governor’s Race: A debate between Gov. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams produced a substantive hour of policy discussion. Here are five takeaways.Aggressive Tactics: Right-wing leaders are calling on election activists to monitor voting in the midterm elections in search of evidence to confirm unfounded theories of election fraud.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.“It was almost inconceivable that we would not have a series of debates,” said Sig Rogich, a longtime Republican political consultant in Nevada and a former aide to Paul Laxalt, the grandfather of the current Republican Senate candidate, Adam Laxalt. “It used to be three, then it went to two and now it’s down to one. And pretty soon it will be none, and I don’t think that’s healthy.”It’s not just debates. Town halls and other events that offered opportunities to interact with voters — stump speeches in sweaty high school gymnasiums, town square meet-and-greets, barnstorming bus tours — have become less common, and those that are still held are often more restricted than in the past. Campaign schedules that used to be blasted to email inboxes are kept private, leaving reporters to dig like detectives just to figure out where a candidate will show up.The shift reflects a drop in the number of competitive House districts and a polarized environment in which swing voters are disappearing, so candidates see little advantage in trying to win them over.It all amounts to an erosion of fundamental American traditions that date back to the earliest years of the Republic: forums in 17th-century New England meeting houses, Abraham Lincoln’s travels across Illinois to debate slavery with Stephen A. Douglas, and packs of reporters surrounding candidates in crowded church basements and veterans’ halls.Pushing Away Reporters, LiterallyWhen Mr. Mastriano, the Republican running for governor in Pennsylvania, appeared in Philadelphia last month, the event had some of the trappings of a traditional campaign stop. It was open to the news media, the candidate sounded standard Republican themes about crime and he emphasized the need for his party to engage Latino voters.A Texas debate with Gov. Greg Abbott and his Democratic challenger, former Representative Beto O’Rourke, featured no audience and no livestream on C-SPAN.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesBut just off-camera, little was as it might have seemed. Mr. Mastriano took no questions from journalists. And, as they often have during his campaign, aides muscled reporters away from the candidate, throwing arms or blocking those who tried to approach with questions.In Atlanta earlier this month, reporters were not allowed into a “worship and luncheon” held for Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee, who had just been accused of paying for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion. Police officers and a security guard even shooed journalists out of the parking lot..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.For some Republicans, declining debates and shunning nonpartisan news outlets is a way to cast themselves in the image of former President Donald J. Trump, who frequently breaks with political norms. His attacks on reporters energized a conservative base that rewards Republican politicians for viewing the mainstream media as the enemy, leaving many strategists to see skipping debates and interviews as a way not only to protect their candidates from unforced errors but to rally support.The irony of that approach is that while Mr. Trump often attacks mainstream journalists, he can’t quit them, either.“You have these candidates saying, ‘I’m Trump-like, so I’m not going to talk to media or debate’ — meanwhile, that’s all he does,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in the battleground state of Pennsylvania who is involved with organizing political debates there.A Republican Stance That SpreadWhile the trend of avoiding the public was initially driven by Republicans, it has seeped across party lines. In-person congressional town-hall meetings have fallen to record lows, according to Indivisible, a liberal grass-roots group that formed after the 2016 election. In 2017, the group counted 1,875 town-hall events by members of Congress. The number spiked to nearly 3,000 in 2019.This year is not on pace to return to prepandemic levels. The group has tracked just 408 through the first half of the year. (Those numbers, the organization said, may fail to account for events announced abruptly on partisan social media.)Dr. Mehmet Oz checked Nikki Haley’s blood pressure during a town-hall-style event last month. These kinds of public political forums have become less common.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesBradford Fitch, president of the Congressional Management Foundation, which advises lawmakers on issues like running their offices and communicating with constituents, said he now urged members not to hold open public meetings because of security concerns.In Democratic circles, candidates have skipped debates by saying their opponents’ actions suggest that any forums between them will not amount to a productive exchange of ideas.Campaign aides to Ms. Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor in Arizona, cited the raucous Republican primary debates in their state as a reason for avoiding a general election face-off against her Republican opponent, Kari Lake, a former newscaster who has molded herself after Mr. Trump and his election lies.Mr. Trump benefited immensely in 2016 from primary debates, where he dominated a large field. Four years later, as the pandemic raged and he recovered from Covid, he refused to hold virtual events, leading to the cancellation of the second scheduled presidential debate.A sparsely attended town-hall event this month in Atlanta featured Gov. Brian Kemp, Stacey Abrams and Senator Raphael Warnock.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe Strategy Favoring DebatesFor decades, debates about debates were driven by political strategy. A candidate in a strong position didn’t want to risk a misstep, and strategists grumbled that the hours of preparation could be better used for fund-raising or other events. Those trailing in the polls would push for more face-offs in hopes of a game-changing moment.Such moments are rare, but they do happen.In October 2016, Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire, said that, “absolutely,” Mr. Trump could be a role model for young children. She spent weeks explaining the remark before losing by about 1,000 votes.That same month in 2016, in the Nevada Senate race, Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, delivered a strong performance in a debate against a Republican who struggled to explain why he had backed away from his endorsement of Mr. Trump. She won narrowly and now is trying to pressure Mr. Laxalt onto the debate stage in hopes of gaining momentum in her re-election race.Kari Lake supporters last month during a Latinos for Lake rally. Instead of debates, candidates prefer speaking to their supporters.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMr. Nicholas, the Republican strategist in Pennsylvania, said the lighter debate schedule this year was a far cry from the three debates that his old boss, former Senator Arlen Specter, always participated in.“In normal times, we would have done three to five debates in the Senate race,” Mr. Nichols said. “Now, it looks like of all of the big Pennsylvania races, there’s only going to be one debate in one race.”There is little sign that debates will return in two years. The Republican National Committee has told the Commission on Presidential Debates that its 2024 presidential candidate will not participate in commission-sponsored debates unless it changes its rules on dates and moderators.“The constructive collision of ideas that used to be the hallmark of our democracy is becoming a distant memory,” said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center.Representative Lauren Boebert, the Colorado Republican, debated her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, last month, but attendance was sparse.William Woody for The New York TimesKatie Glueck More

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      The Boys and Girls Off the Bus. Way Off.

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      Campaign reporting has changed enormously since the days of Theodore White, Timothy Crouse and Richard Ben Cramer. Today, a chat with two Times reporters who live in the brave new world of American politics.Campaign reporting used to be pretty straightforward: You hopped on the bus and followed candidates around as they spoke at rubber-chicken dinners, Rotary Clubs and union halls, or wormed your way into posh homes to eavesdrop on the pitches they made behind closed doors.That was the old days.Now, the most influential player in a Senate or House race might not be the head of the local Chamber of Commerce, but a MAGA influencer or a TikTok cooking star who dabbles in politics.For better or worse, the smoke-filled rooms where party bosses once decided who won and lost no longer rule. A chat on a platform like Telegram or a sit-down on a seemingly obscure podcast can move more votes than an interview with a local Walter Cronkite on the 11 o’clock news.So, with Election Day now less than a month away, I chatted with two reporters at The New York Times who are steeped in this brave new world of political power — tracking fringe movements and conspiracy theorists, meeting with election deniers and hearing from new breeds of political activists who don’t play by the old rules.Alexandra Berzon focuses on efforts to undermine the security and integrity of the American election system; Ken Bensinger covers the right-wing media outlets and social-media stars that have become central to U.S. politics in the digital age.Here is our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:Ali, you worked with former colleagues last year on groundbreaking reporting that showed how Steve Bannon and his calls for a “precinct strategy” are shaping the midterms. What are you seeing and hearing now?Alexandra: The false idea that our election system is fundamentally broken — spurred by debunked conspiracy theories from Donald Trump and his allies about the 2020 election — has proved incredibly sticky. You see it in polling of the Republican base, of course, but also in the scores of groups that operate under the moniker of “election integrity,” which have proliferated since 2020 all over the country and have helped keep this notion alive and energized a base of activists who are not just active online but are holding frequent gatherings.It’s really an extension or morphing of the Tea Party movement, but now focused on the actual administration of elections as a core issue — in fact the precinct strategy that you mentioned was an effort for these activists to take over local county Republican groups, which gives them some amount of involvement in the elections process. Nick Corasaniti and I wrote a brief summary yesterday of some of what has happened on this front since Jan. 6, 2021.And Ken, your story on chatter about “civil war” was pretty eye-opening. What did you find the most disturbing as you delved into why the notion that the U.S. could be headed for political violence is gaining so much traction?Ken: Academics and others who track extremism have written extensively over the past couple of years about how a growing slice of the public may be receptive to, or even welcome, political violence. What was once really a fringe sentiment among only the most radicalized of Americans has moved closer to the political mainstream.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.Research done out of the University of Chicago now indicates that as many as 20 million Americans approve of violence for political ends. While nobody thinks there are millions of folks with assault rifles locked, loaded and ready for battle, it still is a very troubling finding. And it helps explain why politicians seem so much more comfortable with rhetoric about a civil war, or what some politicians call a “national divorce” in which red and blue states are somehow violently separated.Just a few weeks ago, Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser for Trump, claimed in a speech that governors had the power to declare war and “probably will” in the near future. In fact, they cannot do that. The more salient point is this: Flynn was making this speech at a fund-raising event for Mark Finchem, a candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, and the audience — people who paid a minimum of $300 a plate to be there — was eating it up.What are election officials worrying about most right now?Alexandra: The concern I hear about most from election officials (aside from the day-to-day concerns of election administration such as finding venues for polling places and recruiting enough poll workers) is about the impact of misinformation and disinformation. There’s long been a sense that if you bring skeptical people into the process and have them working elections or monitoring them, a lot of their concerns and anxieties will be alleviated.Elections officials and experts are hoping this will be the case now with people who are steeped in election conspiracy theories getting involved in being poll workers and poll watchers. And the officials are certainly expressing confidence that they can run safe and secure elections. But there is also serious anxiety now about these people serving as vigilantes and injecting more uncertainty into the process.Ken, I remember you saying once that you keep your messages open on Twitter as a kind of listening post. What does your direct-message inbox look like on an average week, and are you seeing any trends lately?Ken: I love my fans! As a rule, I like to keep my DMs open because I think it’s important to hear what people have to say, even if it’s not exactly polite. Plus, there are often great story tips buried there between the cryptocurrency spam and scams.Lately, however, I’ve noticed a marked increase in conspiracy-minded messages. A number of people routinely reach out to show me more “proof” that President Biden is dead, or that he has been secretly replaced by a Chinese operative, or that — and I swear I’m not making this up — he’s actually a “lizard person” wearing a cutting-edge silicone mask designed by the C.I.A. You can tell, they say, by the little rubberized tabs visible around the president’s ears.Among a steady stream of Jeffrey Epstein theories and memes plucked straight from 4Chan, I’ve also noticed lately a lot of stuff claiming the Democratic Party is this extremely hawkish institution that wants to trigger global thermonuclear war and is using the conflict in Ukraine as a pathway to do that. It’s an interesting reversal, since for decades it was the Republican Party that was accused of being full of warmongers. I suppose all political trends eventually go full circle.What is happening in American politics that you think deserves more attention?Ken: With each passing day, there seems to be more and more misinformation and disinformation being served up to a public that seems increasingly receptive to it.I’m seeing lots of politicians amplifying this trend in two ways.One is by repeating untruths spread on the internet without attempting to verify them, and becoming some of the primary spreaders of bad info by virtue of their huge followings and reach.The other way is by relentlessly attacking and, lately, ignoring what they call the mainstream media and by telling their followers to do their own research. And while we’ve seen politicians displaying hostility to the press for some time, a new trend seems to be completely ignoring most journalists in favor of communicating directly with voters through social media or a select group of reporters judged to be sympathetic.Candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida rarely, if ever, talk to most reporters, while others, such as Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, appear to have no communications apparatus at all, leaving phone calls, emails and text messages perpetually unanswered.Some candidates don’t campaign in traditional ways anymore, shunning public appearances for carefully controlled interviews on narrowly targeted podcasts and radio shows, and using messages sent via influential surrogates on Twitter, Facebook and, in particular, Telegram.The result, it appears, is that an expanding portion of the public never hears anything remotely close to a diversity of information, while misinformation served up in bad faith morphs into accepted and undeniable fact for untold numbers of people. As a journalist, confronting that is difficult: It feels as if even the most thorough fact-checking efforts are never so much as seen by half the country.Republican candidates who questioned the 2020 election.The New York TimesWhat to read about democracyMore than 370 Republicans on the November ballot have cast doubt on the 2020 election, a Times investigation led by Karen Yourish found. Most are still doing it. Many will win.A memo from Georgia’s elections director gave the false impression that third parties or partisan actors could challenge voters’ eligibility on the spot, much to the concern of the Black community. On Thursday, he clarified that is not the law.Colorado’s secretary of state owned up to a clerical error that led to postcards being sent to noncitizens with instructions on how to register to vote. But the manipulation of quotation marks around the word “accidentally” by election deniers has fueled conspiracy theories.A Republican congressional candidate in Maine is backtracking from claims he made that litter boxes were being placed in school bathrooms for students dressing up as cats, a widely debunked myth. The candidate, Ed Thelander, has also peddled election falsehoods. NBC News has more on the origins of the litter-box myth.viewfinderA supporter saluting Donald Trump last Sunday at a rally in Mesa, Ariz.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesA rally saluteAfter baking in the unrelenting Arizona sun for at least 10 hours, a rally official gestured to us weary and sunburned pool photographers. We peered over the red, white and blue banner separating us from the audience as the sun set behind Donald Trump’s at his rally last Sunday in Mesa, Ariz., to see a lone, elderly veteran saluting the former president.To me, the salute embodies the fierce dedication of Trump’s supporters. To attend a Trump rally, especially to arrive early enough to get a good seat, requires a serious amount of perseverance through hours of standing in line and waiting for his eventual arrival.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Turkey Allows Jail Terms for What It Deems ‘Fake News’

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      Rights advocates fear the government could use newly passed legislation to restrict speech and target critics in the run-up to crucial elections in June.ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Parliament has passed sweeping new legislation intended to stamp out disinformation, allowing the government to jail journalists and social media users for up to three years for spreading information deemed to be false or misleading.The final piece of the legislation, which also requires social media companies to hand over the personal details of users suspected of spreading “fake news,” was approved on Thursday night with votes from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing party and its allies, who control a parliamentary majority.Mr. Erdogan, who has concentrated more power in his hands in recent years while growing less tolerant of dissent, had argued it was necessary to fight disinformation and called social media a threat to democracy.But a range of critics — including opposition lawmakers, media freedom advocates and legal scholars — have criticized the law itself as a threat to democracy, saying that its vague provisions could have a chilling effect on free expression and enable the government to prosecute critics or journalists who publish information about wrongdoing or corruption.Those worries are particularly acute in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June, in which Mr. Erdogan and his party will seek to stay in power, despite galloping inflation that has seen their popularity sag in the polls.The disinformation legislation is the most recent step in what rights watchdogs have called a constriction of free expression in Turkey under Mr. Erdogan, who has been the country’s premier politician since 2003 and president since 2014.In recent years, the websites of foreign news outlets, including the Voice of America and Germany’s DW, have been blocked, Turkish TV stations and newspapers have fallen increasingly under the control of the state, and citizens have been arrested on charges for such crimes as “insulting the president.”But social media and online news sites enjoyed a greater degree of free expression, which the new law threatens to undermine.Representatives of journalist associations and unions protested against the new legislation last week in Turkey’s capital, Ankara.Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo drive that point home, Burak Erbay, an opposition lawmaker, spoke from the Parliament’s podium to the millions of young Turks who will be eligible to vote for the first time next year.“You have only one freedom left: the phone in your pocket,” Mr. Erbay said. “If the law here passes in Parliament, you can break your phone like this.”Then he smashed a cellphone with a hammer.Mahir Unal, a senior lawmaker from Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, defended the legislation in Parliament, saying it did not target free expression or criticism that “does not exceed the limits.”During a TV interview in May, after his party proposed the law, he said, “We are working on this so that freedom of expression, criticism and freedom of the press will not be limited.”To come into force, the new legislation must be signed by Mr. Erdogan within 15 days. He can also send it back to Parliament for revision.Turkey was under fire for limiting freedom of expression even before the new legislation. Freedom House, a democracy promotion group, rates Turkey “Not Free” on its Freedom in the World index. Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 149 out of 180 countries in its press freedom index.The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s legal advisory body, acknowledged in a legal assessment of the legislation the threat that disinformation poses to democratic societies. But at the same time, it called on Turkey not to enact the law, saying it had “serious doubts” about the need to criminalize disinformation in such a way.It also said the legislation could lead to self-censorship, especially during elections.The legislation is not a new law, but it consists of 40 amendments to existing laws.Of greatest concern to rights advocates is Article 29. It allows for prison terms of one to three years for anyone who “disseminates false information about the country’s domestic and foreign security, public order and general health, with the sole aim of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the public and in a manner that is liable to disturb public peace.”Supporters of the legislation have compared it with similar laws in European countries and say it includes enough safeguards to prevent it from being used to punish peaceful, legitimate speech. But legal scholars say it gives the authorities great flexibility in how to apply it.“It is very vague and arbitrary, it will be used in an arbitrary and discriminatory way in Turkey,” said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University. “It lacks adequate legal safeguards and provides wide discretion to the prosecutors and courts.”The law also significantly tightens regulations governing the operations of large social media companies in Turkey.If requested by the Turkish authorities, companies like Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube must remove content and provide proprietary information, including user data of suspected perpetrators and algorithmic information used to determine rankings.Companies that fail to comply could face drastic slowdowns in the speed of their services in Turkey, a practice known as throttling, or fines equal to 3 percent of their global income.Mr. Akdeniz said these companies must decide whether they are going to respect the new requirements to continue to operate in Turkey, at the risk of enabling government crackdowns.“If you comply with this,” he said, “you risk becoming the long arm of the Turkish authorities.” More

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      Major Newspaper Company Will Stop Endorsing National and Statewide Candidates

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      Publications owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, will no longer endorse major political candidates in their opinion pages.In an editorial that is scheduled to run in papers as early as Friday, the company’s publications will tell readers that they will stop endorsing candidates in presidential, Senate and gubernatorial elections.A copy of the editorial was obtained by The New York Times. Alden confirmed its contents and timing.“Unfortunately, as the public discourse has become increasingly acrimonious, common ground has become a no man’s land between the clashing forces of the culture wars,” according to a copy of the planned editorial.“At the same time, with misinformation and disinformation on the rise, readers are often confused, especially online, about the differences between news stories, opinion pieces and editorials.”Alden Global Capital owns about 200 newspapers in the United States, including The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News and The Denver Post. Only Gannett, which owns USA Today and other papers, operates more.The editorial is set to run in the newspapers that had traditionally endorsed candidates, not all newspapers in the Alden group, according to a person with knowledge of the plan. Papers can still endorse candidates for local offices.Newspapers in the United States, including The New York Times, have a long tradition of endorsing candidates. But in recent years, some outlets have questioned the practice or decided to forgo it altogether. The Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia said the 2018 cycle would be its last. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, McClatchy, a large newspaper chain, said its newspapers would not make an endorsement unless they had interviewed both candidates.Three Alden newspapers — The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune and The Denver Post — will be allowed to continue with their endorsements this season because of how far along in the process they are and because they are viewed as state newspapers of record, the person said. Those newspapers will announce after this election cycle that they will end the practice, according to the person with knowledge of the company’s plan.The editorial said the newspapers would continue to cover political races but would “no longer endorse in presidential races or the increasingly nationalized contests for governor and senate.”“We want to make sure our opinion pages advance a healthy and productive public discourse,” it said. “With that in mind, we will focus our efforts on more local contests, such as city councils, school boards, local initiatives, referendums and other such matters, which readers have told us continue to be of great value in their daily lives.” More

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      Elon Musk’s Twitter Will Be a Wild Ride

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      His deal to buy the company is back on. Here are six predictions about Twitter under Musk’s control, if it happens.Buckle up.Elon Musk, who for months has been strenuously trying to back out of a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, now appears ready to buy the company after all. In a surprise letter to Twitter on Monday night, Mr. Musk offered to take Twitter private at his originally proposed price — $54.20 per share — marking a possible end to one of the most dramatic legal feuds in Silicon Valley history.It’s worth noting that the deal could still fall apart — Mr. Musk is famously subject to 11th-hour mood shifts — but the most likely outcome now is that the world’s richest man will in fact become Twitter’s new owner, possibly as soon as this week.Much is unknown about what Mr. Musk will do with Twitter if he acquires it. The mercurial billionaire has made only the vaguest of public statements about his plans for the company and its products.But we now know, thanks in part to a bevy of text messages released as part of the protracted legal battle, that it will be nothing like business as usual. And there are at least six predictions I feel confident making, if the deal does in fact close.He’s going to clean house, starting with firing Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal.A juicy set of text messages between Mr. Musk and his friends and business associates emerged last week, as part of the legal battle. In them, Mr. Musk made clear that he was unhappy with Twitter’s current leadership — in particular with Parag Agrawal, the chief executive, who took over last year from Jack Dorsey.The texts revealed that Mr. Agrawal had initially sought to work constructively with Mr. Musk, and that the two even had a friendly dinner near San Jose, Calif., in March. But the men eventually clashed. Mr. Agrawal, at one point, told Mr. Musk via text message that his habit of tweeting things like “Is Twitter dying?” was “not helping me make Twitter better.”“What did you get done this week?” Mr. Musk shot back. “This is a waste of time.”From reading Mr. Musk’s texts, it’s clear he believes that Twitter’s leadership is weak and ineffective, and lacks the ability to carry out his vision for the company. If Mr. Agrawal doesn’t immediately resign once the deal is complete, I’d expect Mr. Musk to fire him on Day 1 and name himself or a close ally as a replacement.Mr. Musk has also expressed displeasure with other Twitter executives, and it’s hard to see how he could fire Mr. Agrawal without also clearing out most or all of the company’s top leadership and installing his own slate of loyalists.Parag Agrawal, the chief executive of Twitter, may be at risk of losing his job if Mr. Musk takes control of the company.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesEmployees will revolt.Another easy prediction to make about Mr. Musk’s takeover is that it will generate enormous backlash among Twitter’s rank-and-file employees.Twitter, more so than other social media platforms, has a vocally progressive work force and many employees who are deeply invested in the company’s mission of promoting “healthy conversation.” Those employees may believe — for good reason! — that under Mr. Musk’s leadership, Twitter will abandon many of the projects they care about in areas like trust and safety. Or they may simply not want to deal with the drama and tumult of a Musk regime, and start looking for jobs elsewhere.What Happened to Elon Musk’s Twitter DealCard 1 of 9A blockbuster deal. More

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      Trump Files a Defamation Suit Against CNN

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      The former president has a history of threatening, and occasionally filing, lawsuits against media organizations whose coverage he deems unfair.Former President Donald J. Trump sued CNN on Monday, claiming that the network defamed him and demanding $475 million in damages.Over the course of his business and political career, Mr. Trump has frequently threatened to sue media organizations over news coverage that he deems unfair or disrespectful. Although he rarely followed through, his attacks on the media became a staple of his political messaging and have often been cited in fund-raising entreaties in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections.In 2020, his re-election campaign sued The New York Times and The Washington Post over opinion articles that linked Mr. Trump to Russian interference in American elections. His suit against The Times was dismissed; the suit involving The Post is pending.Mr. Trump’s complaint against CNN was filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The lawsuit alleges a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander” that, Mr. Trump asserts, has recently escalated “as CNN fears the plaintiff will run for president in 2024.”The 29-page suit cites numerous times when CNN hosts and guests criticized Mr. Trump over his policies and his questioning of the 2020 presidential election result. It also laments that some guests have invoked Adolf Hitler and the history of Nazi Germany in criticizing Mr. Trump’s behavior. Among the on-air guests cited as having defamed Mr. Trump is the singer Linda Ronstadt.A CNN spokesman declined to comment.A footnote in the lawsuit shows that Mr. Trump’s representatives contacted CNN in July to give notice of prospective litigation and request that the network stop referring to Mr. Trump’s comments about the 2020 election as “lies.” According to the suit, CNN declined Mr. Trump’s request and replied, “You have not identified a single false or defamatory statement in your letter.”In 2019, Mr. Trump threatened CNN with a lawsuit over “unethical and unlawful attacks.” CNN called that threat “a desperate P.R. stunt.” A suit never materialized.In Monday’s suit, Mr. Trump’s lawyers justified their demand for $475 million in damages in part by alleging that CNN’s coverage has caused the former president to suffer “embarrassment, pain, humiliation and mental anguish.” More

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      Doug Mastriano’s Adrift Campaign: No TV Ads, Tiny Crowds, Little Money

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      HARRISBURG, Pa. — In the same spot where he spoke to thousands of people at a raucous State Capitol rally demanding an end to pandemic restrictions in April 2020, Doug Mastriano appeared on Saturday before a crowd of just a few dozen — about half of whom were volunteers for his ragtag campaign for governor of Pennsylvania.Mr. Mastriano, an insurgent state senator who in the spring cruised to the Republican nomination, is learning this fall that while it is one thing to win a crowded G.O.P. primary on the back of online fame and Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, it is quite another to prevail in a general election in a battleground state of nearly 13 million people.He is being heavily outspent by his Democratic rival, has had no television ads on the air since May, has chosen not to interact with the state’s news media in ways that would push his agenda, and trails by double digits in reputable public polling and most private surveys.There’s no sign of cavalry coming to his aid, either: The Republican Governors Association, which is helping the party’s nominees in Arizona, Michigan and six other states, has no current plans to assist Mr. Mastriano, according to people with knowledge of its deliberations.The Pennsylvania governor’s race is perhaps the most consequential in the country. Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel who chartered buses to the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that led to the attack on the Capitol, has vowed to ban abortion without exceptions and pledged to enact sweeping new voting restrictions. He would be likely to accomplish those measures given the Republican advantage in the state legislature.But the stakes aren’t apparent based on Mr. Mastriano’s limited resources. There is little indication that he has built a campaign infrastructure beyond the Facebook videos that propelled him to stardom in right-wing circles and to the vanguard of Christian nationalist politics.“I can’t even assess things because I don’t see a campaign,” said Matt Brouillette, the president of Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, an advocacy group that is a major player in Pennsylvania Republican politics. “I’ve not seen anything that is even a semblance of a campaign.”Mr. Brouillette, who backed one of Mr. Mastriano’s rivals in the G.O.P. primary, added: “Now, maybe he knows something we don’t on how you can win in the fifth-largest state without doing TV or mail. But I guess we’re going to have to wait until Nov. 8 to see whether you can pull something like that off.”Mr. Mastriano’s supporters are counting on a surge of under-the-radar grass-roots enthusiasm on Election Day and a political environment favorable to Republicans. Mark Makela for The New York TimesMr. Brouillette’s organization is the only one to air any television ads attacking Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general who won the Democratic primary for governor uncontested even as he spent $400,000 to help lift Mr. Mastriano to victory in the Republican primary.But while Commonwealth Partners has paid for 811 television ads urging Pennsylvanians to “vote Republican” against Mr. Shapiro, the Democratic nominee’s campaign has broadcast more than 23,000 ads promoting himself and attacking Mr. Mastriano since the May primary, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Republicans elsewhere who, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, won primaries against the wishes of their local political establishments are facing similar disparities in TV advertising in the final weeks of the midterm campaigns. Along with Mr. Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Trump-backed candidates for governor in five other states — Arizona, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and Michigan — have combined to air zero television advertisements since winning their primaries.Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, the R.G.A.’s co-chairman, was asked about whether he views Mr. Mastriano as a viable candidate during a question-and-answer session this month at Georgetown University.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Rushing to Raise Money: Their fund-raising dwarfed by their Democratic rivals, Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington.Inflation Concerns Persist: Several issues have come to the forefront during the six-month primary season that has just ended. But nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Election Deniers Pivot: “Stop the Steal” G.O.P. candidates are shifting to appeal to the swing voters they need to win in November. The question now: Can they get away with it?Toxic Narratives: Misleading and divisive posts about the midterm elections have flooded social media. Here are some prevalent themes.“We don’t fund lost causes and we don’t fund landslides,” Mr. Ducey said. “You have to show us something, you have to demonstrate that you can move numbers and you can raise resources.”In polls of Pennsylvania this month, both The Morning Call of Allentown and CBS News showed Mr. Shapiro with a lead of 11 percentage points over Mr. Mastriano, an advantage that has more than doubled since the primary. The most recent campaign finance reports show that Mr. Mastriano’s campaign account had just $397,319, compared with $13.5 million for Mr. Shapiro.Mr. Mastriano’s supporters say he’s following a Pennsylvania playbook written by Mr. Trump. They are counting on a surge of under-the-radar grass-roots enthusiasm on Election Day and a political environment in which Republicans are motivated by anger with President Biden.“I wish that Senator Mastriano had the money to be on the air,” said Charlie Gerow, a longtime Pennsylvania Republican operative who finished well behind Mr. Mastriano in the primary. He added, “But his nontraditional campaign seems to be working.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.There isn’t a lot of evidence that’s true.Mr. Mastriano, who this year spent $5,000 trying to recruit supporters on the far-right social media platform Gab, never built an army of small donors of the sort that have powered anti-establishment candidates elsewhere — including Mr. Trump.“Really not finding a lot of support from national-level Republican organizations, so we’re calling on people across Pennsylvania and across the United States of America to give directly to our campaign,” a glum-looking Mr. Mastriano said in a video on Facebook last week. “These large groups, we have not seen much assistance coming from them.”Mr. Mastriano in a campaign video posted on Wednesday on Facebook. He has not built an army of small donors like those that have fueled other anti-establishment candidates, including Donald J. Trump.Doug4gov.comThe video solicitation demonstrates the limits of Mr. Mastriano’s unorthodox campaign. Since he posted it on Wednesday, about 4,700 people have viewed the request — a small fraction of the weekly audience of millions for Mr. Shapiro’s deluge of television advertising, not to mention his ubiquity in the Pennsylvania news media.According to Mr. Shapiro’s campaign, he answered questions or conducted interviews with 41 Pennsylvania newspapers, television and radio stations during the first three weeks of September. During the same time period, Mr. Mastriano — who speaks only to conservative news organizations and podcasts — spoke with just three Pennsylvania outlets, according to media trackers.Those in the crowd on Saturday applauded Mr. Mastriano for what they viewed as his taking the fight to the news media. Supporters said his social media presence would be more than enough to counter Mr. Shapiro’s enormous financial advantage.“He has no need to spend money,” said Theresa Wickert, a retiree from Lebanon County, Pa. “It’s grass-roots. He has never put out a commercial against anyone the way that Shapiro and the others are putting them out. Never. He will never do that. That is not who he is.”Mr. Mastriano declined an invitation to an Oct. 3 debate at a dinner hosted by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, the first time in decades the organization has not held a debate between the state’s major-party candidates for governor. Mr. Shapiro will instead answer questions before business leaders at a “fireside chat,” an opportunity Mr. Mastriano also rejected.The campaign of Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, has aired more than 23,000 ads promoting himself and attacking Mr. Mastriano since the May primary, according to AdImpact.Marc Levy/Associated PressAfter speaking to about 60 people on Saturday — days before, his running mate, Carrie Lewis DelRosso, had urged supporters to attend “the big rally” — Mr. Mastriano hustled to a waiting S.U.V. while avoiding questions from reporters. A Pennsylvania state trooper shoved a local newspaper reporter out of the way as he tried asking Mr. Mastriano if he would accept the result of the November election.Aides to Mr. Mastriano did not respond to messages and declined to answer questions at the rally.Mr. Mastriano has resisted private entreaties from supporters to engage more with the news media — if only to spread his message to potential small-dollar donors.“We have sort of a fundamental distrust as conservatives that we don’t get a fair shake,” State Representative Mike Jones, one of the warm-up speakers for Mr. Mastriano on Saturday, said in an interview beforehand. “But when you’re at a financial disadvantage, you’ve got to get out there and take advantage of free media whenever you can.”There’s not much help coming for Mr. Mastriano from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, which was sufficiently in need of cash that, in a real-life Hail Mary, it sold its Harrisburg state headquarters in June to the Catholic church next door for $750,000.Mr. Shapiro has sought to fill the void left by Mr. Mastriano’s aversion to the news media and his inability to afford advertising, trying to win over moderate Republicans who might be put off by Mr. Mastriano’s far-right proposals.Mr. Shapiro has said he would appoint two parents to the state’s Board of Education and has endorsed Republican legislation to allow parents in some of the state’s public schools to use state aid for private school tuition — a move that drew praise on The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page.Mr. Shapiro said he had little sympathy for Mr. Mastriano’s aversion to the press corps.“The question I have when I look at his tactics regarding the media is, you know, what’s he hiding?” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview. “If he can’t answer questions from the Pennsylvania local media, how can you possibly be governor?”Mr. Mastriano speaking to supporters on Saturday in Harrisburg. A half-dozen men wearing uniforms of a local militia group, the South Central Pennsylvania Patriots, patrolled the area. Mark Makela for The New York TimesMr. Mastriano’s rally on Saturday was a hodgepodge of the state’s minor right-wing figures, many who came to prominence fighting public health restrictions early in the pandemic. A half-dozen men wearing uniforms of a local militia group, the South Central Pennsylvania Patriots, patrolled the grounds while a vendor stood behind a merchandise table without moving much product.During one speech, a state representative, David Zimmerman, revealed for the first time that he had received a subpoena from the F.B.I. in its investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “The F.B.I. looked for me all day long,” he said. “But what I did that they didn’t know is, I turned my phone tracker off.”Mr. Mastriano’s supporters said there was little reason to believe the crowd was indicative of his support.They cited an array of explanations for the double-digit crowd — a Penn State college football game up the road in State College, the annual Irish Fall Festival on the Jersey Shore and Facebook, the original source of much of Mr. Mastriano’s popularity.“This is good evidence of being shadow-banned on Facebook,” said the event’s organizer, a Philadelphia-area Uber and Lyft driver named Mike Daino who said he’d been kicked off the platform nine times for spreading misinformation. “They are banning conservative talk. But let’s continue on with the program.” More

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      Social Media Companies Still Boost Election Fraud Claims, Report Says

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      The major social media companies all say they are ready to deal with a torrent of misinformation surrounding the midterm elections in November.A report released on Monday, however, claimed that they continued to undermine the integrity of the vote by allowing election-related conspiracy theories to fester and spread.In the report, the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University said the social media companies still host and amplify “election denialism,” threatening to further erode confidence in the democratic process.The companies, the report argued, bear a responsibility for the false but widespread belief among conservatives that the 2020 election was fraudulent — and that the coming midterms could be, too. The report joins a chorus of warnings from officials and experts that the results in November could be fiercely, even violently, contended.“The malady of election denialism in the U.S. has become one of the most dangerous byproducts of social media,” the report warned, “and it is past time for the industry to do more to address it.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Times/Siena Poll: Our second survey of the 2022 election cycle found Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress, while G.O.P. dreams of a major realignment among Latino voters have failed to materialize.Ohio Senate Race: The contest between Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, appears tighter than many once expected.Pennsylvania Senate Race: In one of his most extensive interviews since having a stroke, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, said he was fully capable of handling a campaign that could decide control of the Senate.The major platforms — Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube — have all announced promises or initiatives to combat disinformation ahead of the 2022 midterms, saying they were committed to protecting the election process. But the report said those measures were ineffective, haphazardly enforced or simply too limited.Facebook, for example, announced that it would ban ads that called into question the legitimacy of the coming elections, but it exempted politicians from its fact-checking program. That, the report says, allows candidates and other influential leaders to undermine confidence in the vote by questioning ballot procedures or other rules.In the case of Twitter, an internal report released as part of a whistle-blower’s complaint from a former head of security, Peiter Zatko, disclosed that the company’s site integrity team had only two experts on misinformation.The New York University report, which incorporated responses from all the companies except YouTube, called for greater transparency in how companies rank, recommend and remove content. It also said they should enhance fact-checking efforts and remove provably untrue claims, and not simply label them false or questionable.A spokeswoman for Twitter, Elizabeth Busby, said the company was undertaking a multifaceted approach to ensuring reliable information about elections. That includes efforts to “pre-bunk” false information and to “reduce the visibility of potentially misleading claims via labels.”In a statement, YouTube said it agreed with “many of the points” made in the report and had already carried out many of its recommendations.“We’ve already removed a number of videos related to the midterms for violating our policies,” the statement said, “and the most viewed and recommended videos and channels related to the election are from authoritative sources, including news channels.”TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.There are already signs that the integrity of the vote in November will be as contentious as it was in 2020, when President Donald J. Trump and some of his supporters refused to accept the outcome, falsely claiming widespread fraud.Inattention by social media companies in the interim has allowed what the report describes as a coordinated campaign to take root among conservatives claiming, again without evidence, that wholesale election fraud is bent on tipping elections to Democrats.“Election denialism,” the report said, “was evolving in 2021 from an obsession with the former president’s inability to accept defeat into a broader, if equally baseless, attack on the patriotism of all Democrats, as well as non-Trump-loving Republicans, and legions of election administrators, many of them career government employees.” More