Republicans

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      House Republicans grill FBI director as Democrats deride attacks on agency

      by

      House Republicans grilled the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, at a frequently contentious committee hearing on Wednesday. While Republicans accused the FBI of political bias in its handling of investigations into Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, Democrats derided the attacks on the bureau as a smokescreen driven by conspiracy theories.The Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, kicked off the hearing with a litany of complaints about the FBI’s alleged targeting of rightwing leaders and activists, lamenting the supposed “double standard that exists now in our justice system”. Jordan suggested that the allegedly misguided leadership of Wray, a Trump appointee, could jeopardize government funding for the FBI’s planned new headquarters.“I hope [Democrats] will work with us in the appropriations process to stop the weaponization of the government against the American people,” Jordan said in his opening statement.The top Democrat on the committee, Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, countered Jordan’s allegations by accusing Republicans of acting as Trump’s attack dog at the expense of Americans’ safety. Last month, Trump was indicted on 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act, over allegations that he intentionally withheld classified documents from federal authorities.“Republicans may want to downplay Trump’s behavior and blame the FBI for his downfall. But no matter what they say, Trump risked the safety and security of the United States to remove those documents from the White House, then lied to the government instead of returning them,” Nadler said. “Donald Trump must be held accountable, and attempts to shield him from the consequences of his own actions are both transparent and despicable.”A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, echoed that sentiment. “Extreme House Republicans have decided that the only law enforcement they like is law enforcement that suits their own partisan political agenda,” he said. “Instead of backing the blue, they’re attacking the blue – going after the FBI, federal prosecutors and other law enforcement professionals with political stunts to try to get themselves attention on the far right.”Several progressives on the committee noted their own concerns about the FBI’s methods of surveillance and data collection, particularly of Black Lives Matter protesters, and they assailed Republicans for focusing so much of their energy on defending Trump rather than on fortifying Americans’ civil liberties.“These are the real oversight issues. They matter to my district, where there is real and justified skepticism of whether the civil rights of Black and brown people are adequately protected,” said Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat of Missouri. “What my district is not concerned about is the Republican conspiracy theories and selective targeting of law enforcement agencies who try to hold their twice-impeached, twice-indicted cult leader Donald Trump accountable.”As House Democrats emphasized the need to hold Trump accountable, Republicans’ questioning of Wray repeatedly turned to Hunter Biden. The president’s son reached a deal with federal prosecutors last month to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges while entering a pre-trial diversion agreement on a separate felony gun charge. The deal, which will result in the dismissal of the gun charge if Hunter Biden meets certain conditions, will allow the president’s son to avoid jail time.Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, asked Wray whether he was “protecting the Bidens” from criminal liability. “Absolutely not,” Wray replied. “The FBI does not, has no interest in protecting anyone politically.”Representative Chip Roy, a Republican of Texas, later derided the FBI as “tyrannical” over the 2020 arrest of anti-abortion activist Mark Houck, claiming the bureau’s agents “stormed” Houck’s house.“I could not disagree more with your description of the FBI as tyrannical,” Wray said. “They did not storm his house. They came to his door. They knocked on his door and identified themselves. They asked him to exit. He did without incident.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWray’s status as a registered Republican who was appointed by Trump and served in the George W Bush administration did not prevent committee members from painting the FBI as an unjust agency on a crusade against rightwing priorities.“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray told the committee.Although much of the hearing focused on the investigations into Trump and Hunter Biden, Wray made a point to remind lawmakers of the FBI’s extensive efforts to combat violent crime and drug trafficking. Those efforts could be curtailed by the FBI funding cuts threatened by some House Republicans, Democrats warned.“The work the men and women of the FBI do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines,” Wray said.Wray himself has been the subject of many headlines in recent months. In May, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, introduced articles of impeachment against Wray because of his handling of the Hunter Biden investigation, among other matters.Wray has also recently found himself in the crosshairs of Representative James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee. Last month, Comer threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress over his refusal to allow the committee to review a document outlining unsubstantiated bribery allegations against Joe Biden and his son. The contempt vote was ultimately called off after Wray agreed to allow committee members to review a redacted version of the document.The Wednesday hearing underscored that Wray’s troubles are not going away anytime soon. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Montana Republican Senate candidate criticized for racist Facebook posts

      by

      The US Senate campaign of Montana Republican Tim Sheehy has been forced on to the defensive following the publication of misogynistic and racist social media posts he is alleged to have written.Sheehy is one of his party’s leading hopes to help it take control of the Senate in next year’s elections, and he is running for the Republican nomination to challenge Jon Tester, seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats seeking re-election.The surfacing of the old Facebook posts threatens to damage the reputation of the former US Navy Seal, an ally of Donald Trump who describes himself on a campaign fundraising website as a “businessman, a husband, a father, and a humble servant of God”.The revelations and screenshots of the posts were published on Tuesday night by Insider, which said Sheehy’s old Facebook profile – since taken down – was “full of questionable photos”, including “lewd photos of women, a caricature of Middle Eastern people, and homoerotic jokes”.One post features a photo allegedly uploaded by Sheehy of a friend drinking from a bottle lodged between a woman’s breasts, and a comment from him which reads in part: “I don’t think her boobs are that big.”In another, Sheehy appears dressed in a white robe and keffiyeh, alongside friends dressed as Iraq’s former president Saddam Hussein, who was executed in 2006 for crimes against humanity.A third features a woman identified as Sheehy’s now-wife Carmen in a stars-and-stripes bikini, firing what appears to be an automatic weapon. “She’s not a skank … she’s a very fit defender of Americas [sic] freedom obviously,” he wrote in an accompanying comment.The posts, the outlet said, were made between 2006 and 2008, when Sheehy was a student at separate army and navy military training academies, and were “much of what one might expect from an adolescent posting on a burgeoning social media network in the 2000s”.The Guardian has reached out to Sheehy’s campaign for comment.In a statement to Insider, Sheehy spokesperson Katie Martin did not deny he had made the posts but called the story “harassment of a war hero over some goofing around as a kid”.Sheehy, who founded his own aerospace company when he became “medically separated” from the military after being wounded during a tour of duty in Afghanistan, was twice decorated for “valor in combat”.Martin also blamed “Democrats” for circulating the screenshots and accused them of hypocrisy over an episode reported last month by Fox News in which Tester is alleged to have urinated in a field in front of a journalist.“Neither he nor his staff have yet to explain why a grown man at 66 years old would find that behavior appropriate,” Martin told the Insider.Sheehy launched his campaign last month and faces a “competitive primary” for his party’s Senate nomination, according to the Montana Free Press.Among his likely opponents, Politico said, is conservative state lawmaker Matt Rosendale, a “rabble rouser” who lost to Tester in 2018 by almost 4% in a state Trump won handily in the 2016 and 2020 presidential races.Democrats have accused Sheehy, a millionaire businessman with roots in Minnesota, as an “out of state transplant” recruited by Republican leadership specifically to challenge Tester.“Jon Tester has farm equipment that’s been in Montana longer than Tim Sheehy,” Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the state Democratic party, told the Free Press. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Tensions flare as Iowa passes six-week abortion ban – video report

      by

      Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most women know they are pregnant. Republican lawmakers, who hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after the governor, Kim Reynolds, called a special session to seek a vote on the ban. The bill passed with exclusively Republican support in a rare one-day legislative burst lasting more than 14 hours More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Iowa Republicans pass six-week abortion ban

      by

      Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most people know they are pregnant.Republican lawmakers, which hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after the governor, Kim Reynolds, called a special session to seek a vote on the ban.The bill passed with exclusively Republican support in a rare, one-day legislative burst lasting more than 14 hours.The legislation will take immediate effect after the governor signs it on Friday and will prohibit abortions after the first sign of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks, with some exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It will allow for abortions up until 20 weeks of pregnancy only under certain conditions of medical emergency. Abortions in the state were previously allowed up to 20 weeks.“The Iowa supreme court questioned whether this legislature would pass the same law they did in 2018, and today they have a clear answer,” Reynolds said in a statement. “The voices of Iowans and their democratically elected representatives cannot be ignored any longer, and justice for the unborn should not be delayed.”The legislation is the latest in a raft of anti-abortion laws passed in states across the country since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, ending the nationwide constitutional right to abortion. A number of states, including a swath of the southern US, have passed full bans on abortion without exceptions for cases of rape or incest.Preparations were already under way to quickly file legal challenges in court and get the measure blocked, once Reynolds signs it into law.A similar six-week ban that the legislature passed in 2018 was blocked by the state’s supreme court one year later. Since that decision, however, Roe has been overturned and a more conservative court ruled that abortion is no longer a constitutionally protected right in Iowa. The court was split 3-3 last month on whether to remove the block on the 2018 law, a deadlock which resulted in Reynolds seeking to pass new legislation in a special session this week.“The ACLU of Iowa, Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic remain committed to protecting the reproductive rights of Iowans to control their bodies and their lives, their health and their safety – including filing a lawsuit to block this reckless, cruel law,” the ACLU of Iowa’s executive director, Mark Stringer, said in a statement.In the meantime, Planned Parenthood North Central States has said it will refer patients out of state if they’re scheduled for abortions in the next few weeks. The organization, the largest abortion provider in the state, will continue to provide care to patients who present before cardiac activity is detected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs state lawmakers debated the bill, crowds of protesters gathered in the capitol rotunda in support of reproductive rights and chanted “vote them out” at Republican legislators. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa survey from last year showed that around 61% of Iowans were generally in favor of abortion access, a number that tracks with nationwide beliefs about the right to abortion.During a public hearing on Tuesday before the vote, lawmakers heard from advocates both for and against the bill who gave brief statements in the chambers. A range of medical professionals and reproductive rights activists urged the legislature to reconsider the bill, warning that it would cause immense societal harm, reduce bodily autonomy and prevent physicians from caring for patients.“You would be forcing a woman to a lifelong obligation which affects her education, career, family and community,” Amy Bingaman, an obstetrician and gynecologist, told lawmakers.Advocates of the bill, many from Christian organizations and hardline anti-abortion activist groups, thanked lawmakers during the hearing and touted the bill as a victory for their movement.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

    • 225 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump documents trial judge sets first hearing; Georgia grand jury set to weigh 2020 election charges – live

      by

      From 1h agoThe first hearing before US District Judge Aileen Cannon in the federal criminal case against Donald Trump will be on 18 July, according to a court order.As California considers implementing large-scale reparations for Black residents affected by the legacy of slavery, the state has also become the focus of the nation’s divisive reparations conversation, drawing the backlash of conservatives criticizing the priorities of a “liberal” state.“Reparations for Slavery? California’s Bad Idea Catches On,” commentator Jason L Riley wrote in the Wall Street Journal, as New York approved a commission to study the idea. In the Washington Post, conservative columnist George F Will said the state’s debate around reparations adds to a “plague of solemn silliness”.Roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose the idea of reparations, according to 2021 polling from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and 2022 polling from the Pew Research Center. Both found that more than 80% Black respondents support some kind of compensation for the descendants of slaves, while a similar majority of white respondents opposed. Pew found that roughly two-thirds of Hispanics and Asian Americans opposed, as well.But in California, there’s greater support. Both the state’s Reparations Task Force – which released its 1,100-page final report and recommendations to the public on 29 June – and a University of California, Los Angeles study found that roughly two-thirds of Californians are in favor of some form of reparations, though residents are divided on what they should be.When delving into the reasons why people resist, Tatishe Nteta, who directed the UMass poll, expected feasibility or the challenges of implementing large programs to top the list, but this wasn’t the case.“When we ask people why they oppose, it’s not about the cost. It’s not about logistics. It’s not about the impossibility to place a monetary value on the impact of slavery,” said Nteta, provost professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
      It is consistently this notion that the descendants of slaves do not deserve these types of reparations.
      Read the full story here.More than 1,5000 amendments were filed to the FY2024 defense authorization bill, which is projected to hit the House floor this week. At issue is whether the House will take up the hard-right amendments, with the weight falling once again on Speaker Kevin McCarthy.Some of the most closely watched amendments relate to abortion, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) funding, and transgender troops, according to Politico’s Playbook.McCarthy will need to navigate between the demands of his most conservative members – three of whom serve on the House rules committee – and the need for Democratic votes in order to get a bill ultimately signed into law, Playbook writes. It continues:
      In the past, House leaders typically have told the hard right to pound sand, knowing they weren’t going to vote for the final bill anyway. But after pissing off conservatives during the debt limit standoff, McCarthy looks poised to make a different calculation this time.
      Facing heavy criticism from the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives, McCarthy is under pressure to give on a number of high-profile issues touching defense policy, Punchbowl News writes. It says:
      Every ‘culture war’ provision from the Freedom Caucus that’s added to the base legislation will cost Democratic votes. It will also make GOP moderates unhappy.
      The House rules committee is scheduled to mark up the FY2024 defense authorization bill, the annual bill setting Pentagon priorities and policies, today.The bill, which is expected to hit the floor later this week, has been signed into law 60 years straight. But this year, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and GOP leaders are confronting a legislative landmine as the far-right House Freedom Caucus push for dozens of proposed changes to the legislation.Adam Smith, the head Democrat on the House armed services committee, said he was worried about a flurry of “extreme right-wing amendments” attached to the bill and that he wasn’t “remotely” confident the bill will pass this week.Smith told the Washington Post he was concerned about GOP measures on “abortion, guns, the border, and social policy and equity issues”. Without the controversial amendments, Smith predicted that well over 300 House members would vote for the bill. With them, “you lose most, if not all, Democrats,” he told Politico’s Playbook.Iowa’s state legislature is holding a special session on Tuesday as it plans to vote on a bill that would ban most abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy, when most people don’t yet know they are pregnant.The state is the latest in the country to vote on legislation restricting reproductive rights after the overturning of Roe v Wade last year, which ended the nationwide constitutional right to abortion.Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, called for the special session last week, vowing to “continue to fight against the inhumanity of abortion” and calling the “pro-life” movement against reproductive rights “the most important human rights cause of our time”.Lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature will debate House Study Bill 255, which was released on Friday and seeks to prohibit abortions at the first sign of cardiac activity except in certain cases such as rape or incest.Iowa’s house, senate and governor’s office are all Republican-controlled, and the bill faces few hurdles from being passed.Read the full story here.The first hearing before US District Judge Aileen Cannon in the federal criminal case against Donald Trump will be on 18 July, according to a court order.Trump was charged with retention of national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.Cipa provides a mechanism for the government to charge cases involving classified documents without risking the “graymail” problem, where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, but the steps that have to be followed mean it takes longer to get to trial.The process includes the government turning over all of the classified information they want to use to the defense in discovery, like any other criminal case, in addition to the non-classified discovery that is done in a separate process.Trump’s lawyers argued the amount of discovery – the government is making the material available in batches because there is so much evidence and it has not finished processing everything that came from search warrants – meant that they could not know how long the process would take.Trump’s lawyers wrote:
      From a practical manner, the volume of discovery and the Cipa logistics alone make plain that the government’s requested schedule is unrealistic.
      Donald Trump asked the federal judge overseeing the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case to indefinitely postpone setting a trial date in court filings on Monday and suggested, at a minimum, that any scheduled trial should not take place until after the 2024 presidential election.The papers submitted by Trump’s lawyers in response to the US justice department’s motion to hold the trial this December made clear the former president’s aim to delay proceedings as their guiding strategy – the case may be dropped if Trump wins the election.The filing said:
      The court should, respectfully, before establishing any trial date, allow time for development of further clarity as to the full nature and scope of the motions that will be filed.
      Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis launched the investigation in early 2021, after Donald Trump tried to overturn his election defeat in Georgia by calling Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, and suggesting the state’s top elections official could help him “find 11,780 votes”, just enough needed to beat Joe Biden.The investigation expanded to include an examination of a slate of Republican fake electors, phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the weeks after the 2020 election and unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud made to state lawmakers, according to AP.About a year into her investigation, Willis asked for a special grand jury. At the time, she said she needed the panel’s subpoena power to compel testimony from witnesses who had refused to cooperate without a subpoena. In a January 2022 letter to Fulton county superior court chief judge, Christopher Brasher, Willis wrote that Raffensperger, who she called an “essential witness”, had “indicated that he will not participate in an interview or otherwise offer evidence until he is presented with a subpoena by my office”.That special grand jury was seated in May 2022, and released in January after completing its work. The panel issued subpoenas and heard testimony from 75 witnesses, ranging from some of Trump’s most prominent allies to local election workers, before drafting a final report with recommendations for Willis.Portions of that report that were released in February said jurors believed that “one or more witnesses” committed perjury and urged local prosecutors to bring charges. The panel’s foreperson said in media interviews later that they recommended indicting numerous people, but she declined to name names.Here’s a bit more on the grand jury being seated today in Atlanta, Georgia, that will probably consider charges against Donald Trump and his Republican allies for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The new grand jury term begins today in Fulton county, and two panels will be selected at the downtown Atlanta courthouse, each made up of 16 to 23 people and up to three alternates. One of these panels is expected to handle the Trump investigation.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will preside over today’s court proceedings, CNN reported. McBurney oversaw the special grand jury that previously collected evidence in the Trump investigation, and he is also expected to oversee the grand jury tasked with making charging decisions in the case.Good morning, US politics blog readers. A grand jury being seated today in Atlanta is expected to consider charges against former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis launched the investigation in early 2021, shortly after Trump tried to overturn his loss by calling Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and suggested the state’s top elections official could help him “find 11,780 votes”.A special grand jury previously issued subpoenas and heard testimony from about 75 witnesses, which included Trump advisers, his former attorneys, White House aides, and Georgia officials. That panel drafted a final report with recommendations for Willis.The new grand jury term begins today in Fulton county, which includes most of Atlanta and some suburbs. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will swear-in two grand juries, one of which is expected to hear evidence in the Georgia elections case.Willis, an elected Democrat, is expected to present her case before one of two new grand juries being seated. The panel won’t be deciding guilt, only if Willis has enough evidence to move her case forward and who should face indictment. Willis has previously indicated that final decisions could come next month.Here’s what else we’re watching today:
      Joe Biden is meeting with other Nato leaders in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Russia’s war in Ukraine will top the agenda.
      The House rules committee is scheduled to mark up the FY2024 defense authorization bill today. The legislation is set to hit the floor later this week, with final passage currently envisioned for Friday.
      The House will meet at noon and at 2pm will take up multiple bills, with last votes expected at 6.30pm
      The Senate will meet at 10am and vote on several nominations throughout the day. There will be classified all-senators briefing with defense and intelligence officials on how AI is used for national security purposes. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican fabulist George Santos compares himself to Rosa Parks

      by

      George Santos, the Republican congressman whose résumé has been shown to be largely fabricated and who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds, stoked outrage by comparing himself to the great civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks.“Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back, and neither am I gonna sit in the back,” Santos told Mike Crispi Unafraid, a rightwing podcast.Santos also said he will run for re-election in his New York seat, which covers parts of Long Island and Queens.A prospective opponent, the Democratic former state senator Anna M Kaplan, said: “George Santos is an absolute disgrace who continues to embarrass New Yorkers.”Now honoured by a statue in the US Capitol, Parks was a seamstress and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People secretary who carved her place in history when on a bus in Alabama in 1955 she refused to move to make way for a white passenger and was arrested and jailed.According to the Architect of the Capitol, Parks “remained an icon of the civil rights movement to the end of her life. In 1999, the United States Congress honored her with a Congressional Gold Medal. Following her death on 24 October 2005, she was accorded the rare tribute of having her remains lie in honor in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in recognition of her contribution to advancing civil and human rights.”The Parks statue is the first full-length representation of an African American person in the US Capitol. Made of bronze and granite, it is close to 9ft tall and, according to its official description, “suggests inner strength, dignity, resolve and determination, all characteristic of her long-time commitment to working for civil rights”.Santos, 34, compared himself to Parks while sitting in what appeared to be a parked car, wearing a powder blue zip-up hoodie.Since being elected last year, he has consistently attracted controversy over reports of behavior ranging from the bizarre to the picaresque and allegedly criminal. Charged in New York, his bail was guaranteed by relatives. No trial date has been set.Republican House leaders, governing with a small majority, have not seriously moved against him. A motion to expel, and make Santos only the sixth House member ever ejected, failed after Republicans refused to back it.Speaking to Crispi, a former Republican congressional candidate in New Jersey, Santos said of critics in his own party: “They come for me, I go right back for them … So, you know, it’s not gonna stay that way any more. I’m gonna call them out. You want to call me a liar? I’ll call you a sellout.”In February, at Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Santos was confronted by Mitt Romney, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee.Romney called Santos a “sick puppy”. Among Santos’s many controversies is a dropped charge of theft in Pennsylvania in 2017, over a purchase of puppies.Santos told Crispi: “The man goes to the State of the Union of the United States wearing the Ukraine lapel pin and tells me, a Latino gay man, that I shouldn’t sit in the front, that I should be in the back. Well, guess what, Rosa Parks but didn’t sit in the back and neither am I gonna sit in the back.“That’s just the reality of our work. Mitt Romney lives in a very different world. And he needs to buckle up because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for him.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Ron DeSantis cannot ‘out-Trump Trump’ in primary, Ocasio-Cortez says

      by

      Ron DeSantis has made “very large, critical errors” in the Republican presidential primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, the biggest of which is the Florida governor’s attempt to “out-Trump Trump” and appeal to the hard-right GOP base.“The dynamics of these races change from day to day,” the New York progressive congresswoman told MSNBC. “I think that Governor DeSantis has made some very large, critical errors.“You can’t out-Trump Trump, right? And that’s what he’s really been trying to do. His attacks on teachers, on schools, on LGBTQ+ Americans, I think, go way too far in the state of Florida. And I think that they are a profound political miscalculation and an overcompensation.”DeSantis is a clear second in polling regarding the Republican nomination but lags as much as 30 points behind Donald Trump.The former president is the clear frontrunner despite an unprecedented 71 criminal indictments, a $5m civil penalty after being held liable for sexual assault and defamation, and the prospect of more charges to come regarding attempted election subversion.DeSantis, a former US congressman, won a landslide re-election in Florida last year. He has pursued a hard-right agenda, including signing a six-week abortion ban, loosening gun controls and attacking the teaching of race and LGBTQ+ issues in public schools.But he has struggled to make an impact on the campaign trail, observers suggesting he lacks the skills to truly connect with voters, even in a Republican primary, let alone in a general election.On Sunday, DeSantis told Fox News: “The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I will beat [Joe] Biden. But, even more importantly, they know I will actually deliver on all these things.”Head-to-head polling shows Biden and DeSantis in a tight race. Recent surveys from Emerson and Yahoo News gave Biden leads of six and three points respectively. NBC News found the two men in a tie.DeSantis listed hard-right priorities he said he would pursue in power: “We will stop the invasion at the border. We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control.“We will do all the things that they don’t want to see done, and so they’re going to continue doing the type of narrative.”Ocasio-Cortez was not convinced.Speaking on Sunday to the former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, she said: “He may be trying to win a base, but that base belongs to Donald Trump.“And he has sacrificed, I think, the one thing that others may have thought would make him competitive, which is this idea that he would somehow be more rational than Donald Trump, which he isn’t.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘A deranged ploy’: how Republicans are fueling the disinformation wars

      by

      A federal judge in Louisiana ruled last week that a wide range of Biden administration officials could not communicate with social media companies about content moderation issues, and in a lengthy opinion described the White House’s outreach to platforms as “almost dystopian” and reminiscent of “an Orwellian ministry of truth”.The ruling, which was delivered by the Trump-appointed judge Terry Doughty, was a significant milestone in a case that Republicans have pushed as proof that the Biden administration is attempting to silence conservative voices. It is also the latest in a wider rightwing campaign to weaken attempts at stopping false information and conspiracy theories from proliferating online, one that has included framing disinformation researchers and their efforts as part of a wide-reaching censorship regime.Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana have sued Biden administration officials, the GOP-controlled House judiciary committee has demanded extensive documents from researchers studying disinformation, and rightwing media has attacked academics and officials who monitor social media platforms. Many of the researchers involved have faced significant harassment, leading to fears of a chilling effect on speaking out against disinformation ahead of the 2024 presidential election.The Republican pushback against anti-disinformation campaigns has existed for years, alleging that content moderation on major platforms has unfairly targeted conservative voices. Many tech platforms have instituted policies against misinformation or hateful speech that have resulted in content such as election denial, anti-vaccine falsehoods and far-right conspiracy theories being removed – all which tend to skew Republican. But research has found that allegations of anti-conservative bias at social media companies have little empirical evidence, with a 2021 New York University study showing that these platforms’ algorithms instead often work to amplify rightwing content.The rightwing narrative of tech platform censorship persisted, however, intensifying as companies prohibited medical misinformation about Covid-19. It gained additional momentum last year after the Department of Homeland Security rolled out a disinformation governance board aimed at researching ways to stop malicious online influence campaigns and harmful misinformation. Republican politicians and rightwing media immediately seized on the board as proof of a leftist authoritarian plot.Fox News hosts specifically singled out researcher Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to be the board’s executive director, and ran numerous segments viciously mocking her. A year-long harassment campaign followed, leading to Jankowicz receiving death threats, having deepfake pornography made of her and seeing her personal information released online against her will.The disinformation governance board suspended its operations only a month after its debut, in what Jankowicz told the Guardian earlier this week was the start of a larger rightwing campaign aimed at rolling back checks on disinformation. “They got a win in shutting us down, so why would they stop there?” said Jankowicz, who was originally named in the Louisiana lawsuit but removed on account of no longer being a government official.The GOP takes aim at researchersIn addition to the lawsuit in Louisiana, Republicans have put pressure on researchers through a House select subcommittee investigation that launched in January and claims it will look into the “weaponization of the federal government”. The House judiciary committee chair, Jim Jordan, earlier this year issued a wide-ranging request for information and documents to multiple universities with programs aimed at researching disinformation, and has so far sent dozens of subpoenas.Among the institutions and officials that Jordan requested emails and documents from were the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and the non-profit Election Integrity Partnership. Jordan last month threatened Stanford University with legal action if it did not turn over additional records. (Stanford released communications with government officials but did not send some internal records, including ones that involved students, the university told the Washington Post.)The Stanford Internet Observatory, the Center for an Informed Public and the Election Integrity Partnership did not return requests for comment.Democratic representatives decried the committee’s activities as an attempt to harangue researchers and institutions that its members viewed as political enemies, likening it to McCarthyism and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.“This committee is nothing more than a deranged ploy by the Maga extremists who have hijacked the Republican party and now want to use taxpayer money to push their far-right conspiracy nonsense,” Jim McGovern, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, said during the formation of the committee.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe committee has struggled to be seen as legitimate, with a Washington Post-ABC News poll released in February showing that a majority of Americans view it as a partisan attempt to score political points. But it has nonetheless put pressure on academic institutions and emboldened attacks against researchers, including the University of Washington disinformation expert Kate Starbird, who told the Washington Post that she has faced political intimidation and cut back on public engagement.Starbird and other researchers are directly named in the Louisiana lawsuit for their role as advisers to a now-disbanded Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency subcommittee on disinformation. Starbird, who did not return a request for comment, has previously stated that the Republican-led lawsuit egregiously misrepresents her work.The Louisiana lawsuitRepublicans filed the lawsuit against Biden last year, and were joined by other plaintiffs that included the conspiracy site the Gateway Pundit and a Louisiana group opposed to vaccine mandates.The case was notably filed in a Louisiana district court where Judge Terry Doughty presides. Doughty, who was appointed by Trump and previously ruled against Biden administration mask and vaccine mandates, is a jurist Republicans specifically seek out when shopping for a favorable forum. He has overseen more multi-state challenges to the Biden administration than any other judge, Bloomberg Law reported, despite previously being a little-known justice based in a small city of less than 50,000 people.Legal experts questioned Doughty’s injunction against the Biden administration this week, the Associated Press reported, saying that the wide scope of the ruling meant that public health officials could be prevented from sharing their expertise. Meanwhile, disinformation researchers have stated that Republican efforts to push back against content moderation and safeguards against misinformation threaten to open the floodgates for conspiracy theories and falsehoods ahead of the 2024 presidential election.Amid the rightwing campaign against content moderation and disinformation researchers, numerous social media platforms have also been peeling back restrictions. Twitter under Elon Musk, who last year engineered the release of some internal communications between Twitter and government officials, has hollowed out its content moderation teams. Meanwhile, YouTube has reversed a policy banning election denialism and Instagram allowed the prominent anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr back on the platform.The Biden administration stated this week that it objected to Doughty’s injunction in the Louisiana case, and would be considering its options. The justice department is seeking to appeal the ruling. More