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      Fact-Checking Haley and DeSantis in Their Race to Rival Trump

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, have attacked each other with misleading claims on dealings with Chinese companies, energy and refugees.Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are vying to dethrone the Republican Party’s clear presidential front-runner, Donald J. Trump. But first one needs to triumph over the other.As Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis battle to be the unequivocal alternative to the former president, they and their supporters have repeatedly turned to attacks, some of which distort the facts, to cast doubt on each other.The claims have centered on dealings with Chinese companies, energy, taxes and refugees.Here’s a fact check on some of their claims.WHAT WAS SAID“Ambassador Haley said somehow I wasn’t doing — she welcomed them into South Carolina, gave them land near a military base, wrote the Chinese ambassador a love letter saying what a great friend they were.”— Mr. DeSantis during the debate last weekThis requires context. As governor, Ms. Haley welcomed Chinese companies coming to South Carolina. On Facebook in 2016, Ms. Haley celebrated the fact that China Jushi, a fiberglass company, would be opening its first manufacturing plant in the United States in Richland County.China Jushi is partly owned by China National Building Material, which is tied to the Chinese government. The plant is about five miles from Fort Jackson, used for Army combat training.But South Carolina did not give the company land, as Mr. DeSantis claimed; the county did, with certain conditions.Richland County transferred 197 acres to China Jushi under a deal in which the company would invest $400 million in the project and create at least 800 full-time jobs, according to the 2016 agreement.The state did help: South Carolina’s Coordinating Council for Economic Development in 2016 approved a $7 million grant to Richland County to help fund site preparation and infrastructure improvements, said Kelly Coakley, a spokeswoman for the state’s Commerce Department.It is true that Ms. Haley wrote a 2014 letter to China’s ambassador to the United States at the time, thanking him for congratulating her on her re-election and calling the country a “friend.”During her bid for the presidency, Ms. Haley has positioned herself as being tough on China, casting the country as her foil and saying she came to better understand its dangers when she became ambassador to the United Nations.Mr. DeSantis attacked Ms. Haley because of her relationship with Chinese businesses while she was governor of South Carolina.John Tully for The New York TimesWHAT WAS SAID“DeSantis gave millions to Chinese companies. DeSantis even voted to fast-track Obama’s Chinese trade deals.”— A pro-Haley super PAC, SFA Fund Inc., in an adFalse. There is no evidence Mr. DeSantis directly gave “millions” to Chinese companies; the ad was referring to technology purchases by state agencies. And the trade-related vote in question, when Mr. DeSantis was in Congress, did not result in the Obama administration signing trade deals with China.In regards to the claim that Mr. DeSantis gave millions to Chinese companies, a representative for the super PAC cited a 2020 article in The Washington Times, a conservative publication. The article concerned a report that asserted that state governments around the country were introducing security threats because of technology contracts with two companies: Lexmark, which was acquired by a Chinese consortium in 2016, and Lenovo, a Chinese tech company. Both companies disputed the report in statements to the news outlet.Florida records do show state agencies have spent millions in purchases from the companies, mostly Lexmark, for printers and other products, since Mr. DeSantis took office on Jan. 8, 2019. South Carolina has also worked with the companies, including under Ms. Haley’s governorship.Florida used those companies before Mr. DeSantis’s tenure, too, and SFA Fund provided no evidence that Mr. DeSantis himself directly approved the purchases. Last year, Mr. DeSantis issued an executive order instructing state officials to create rules to prevent state entities from buying technology that presents security risks, including because of a connection to China or other “foreign countries of concern.”The ad’s contention that Mr. DeSantis “voted to fast-track Obama’s Chinese trade deals” is similarly flawed. It is based on a vote Mr. DeSantis made as a congressman in 2015 to extend the president’s authority to fast-track trade legislation. He was among 190 Republicans in the House to vote for it.But Mark Wu, a Harvard law professor with expertise in international trade, said no trade agreements subject to that authority were made with China.“In passing T.P.A. in 2015, Congress agreed only to fast-track trade agreements that addressed tariff barriers (along with possibly nontariff barriers),” Mr. Wu said in an email, referring to the trade promotion authority bill that bolstered the president’s power to negotiate trade deals with Asia and Europe. “None of the negotiations that the U.S. conducted with China during the Obama administration fell into this category. Nor did these negotiations result in any trade deals with China during the Obama administration.”WHAT WAS SAID“Ron, you are the chair of your economic development agency that, as of last week, said Florida is the ideal place for Chinese businesses. Not only that, you have a company that is manufacturer of Chinese military planes. You have it. They are expanding two training sites at two of your airports now, one which is 12 miles away from a naval base. Then you have another company that’s expanding, and they were just invaded by the Department of Homeland Security.”— Ms. Haley during the debate last weekThis requires context. Mr. DeSantis previously served as the board chairman of a public-private economic development organization known as Enterprise Florida. The governor signed legislation earlier this year that consolidated the organization’s work into what is now the state’s Commerce Department.Ms. Haley was referring to an old report. A 2019-2020 report by Enterprise Florida described Florida as “an ideal business destination for Chinese companies.” Ms. Haley’s campaign has hit Mr. DeSantis over reports that the document was taken down this month.Ms. Haley’s other points largely check out.In October last year, Cirrus Aircraft — which was acquired in 2011 by a Chinese state-owned company that makes military aircraft — announced it had expanded locations at the Orlando Executive Airport and Kissimmee Gateway Airport. The first location provides aircraft sales and concierge flight training, while the other offers aircraft maintenance and management. The Orlando complex is less than 10 miles from a Navy training systems center.Regarding the company raided by the Homeland Security Department, Ms. Haley was referring to a solar panel company, JinkoSolar, based in China. Homeland security officials in May executed search warrants at its factory in Jacksonville, Fla., and an office in California.While federal officials have not provided details on that inquiry, it appears to be linked to multiple concerns. Those include whether JinkoSolar misrepresented the source of some imports containing materials from the Xinjiang region of China and incorrectly classified products, resulting in an incorrect duty rate, The New York Times has reported. The company has said that it is confident in its supply chain traceability and that U.S. customs officials have reviewed and released JinkoSolar products.In June, Jacksonville’s City Council withdrew a bill that would have provided the company tax incentives to expand. A JinkoSolar representative said in a statement that the company still planned to pursue its $50 million expansion.WHAT WAS SAID“Nikki Haley promised South Carolina she would never support increasing taxes on gas. She broke that promise almost immediately.”— A pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, in a post on X last weekThis is misleading. As governor, Ms. Haley rebuffed calls to increase South Carolina’s gas tax as a stand-alone measure.The ad included in the post features clips taken from Ms. Haley’s State of the State addresses. First she is shown saying, in 2013, “But I will not, not now, not ever, support raising the gas tax.” She is then shown in 2015 saying, “Let’s increase the gas tax by 10 cents over the next three years.”But Ms. Haley’s full 2015 remarks shows that the super PAC took her comments out of context. She first acknowledged that “some have advocated raising the state gas tax” to increase revenue for infrastructure projects and later said: “As I’ve said many times, I will veto any straight-up increase in the gas tax.”Instead, Ms. Haley said she would only support a gas tax increase if the state reduced the income tax rate to 5 percent, from 7 percent, and made changes to the state’s Department of Transportation.The state did not ultimately increase the gas tax under Ms. Haley.Ms. Haley has accused Mr. DeSantis as anti-fracking.John Tully for The New York TimesWHAT WAS SAID“DeSantis reacts to Nikki Haley wanting to import Gazan refugees to the U.S.”— Mr. DeSantis’s campaign in a post on X in OctoberFalse. Ms. Haley did not call for the United States to bring in refugees from Gaza. But Mr. DeSantis and his supporters homed in on an interview Ms. Haley did with CNN to erroneously claim she did.In that October interview, Ms. Haley was asked to respond to remarks in which Mr. DeSantis, seemingly referring to the Palestinian population, said: “If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.” (Survey data from before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel suggested many Gazans wanted Hamas to stop calling for Israel’s destruction and supported maintaining a cease-fire with Israel, as the CNN host, Jake Tapper, pointed out.)“There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule,” Ms. Haley said. “They want to be free from all of that. And America’s always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists. And that’s what we have to do.”But Ms. Haley did not in that interview or elsewhere say the United States should take in Gazan refugees.In fact, Ms. Haley expressed sympathy for the “Palestinian citizens, especially the innocent ones,” but she questioned why Middle Eastern countries like Qatar, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt were not taking in such refugees. She later explicitly said the United States should not take in such refugees.“Honestly, the Hamas-sympathizing countries should take these Gazans now,” Ms. Haley said days later on Fox News, adding: “There is no reason for any refugees to come to America.”WHAT WAS SAID“Ron DeSantis. He’s anti-fracking, He’s anti-drilling.”— Ms. Haley’s campaign in an adThis is misleading. During his presidential campaign, Mr. DeSantis has said that he supports fracking and offshore drilling nationally — a point that Ms. Haley has omitted when airing similar claims.It is true that while running for governor in 2018, he opposed such drilling and fracking in Florida. His campaign website said at the time that “Ron DeSantis has a proven track record in supporting measures to ban offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico” and called fracking a “danger to our state that is not acceptable.”That same election, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment banning offshore oil and gas drilling in state waters. Once governor, Mr. DeSantis ordered the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to take “necessary actions to adamantly oppose all offshore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.”A formal ban on fracking in Florida was not enacted.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com. More

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      La IA hace campaña en las elecciones de Argentina

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      Los afiches que salpican las calles de Buenos Aires tienen un cierto toque soviético.Había uno de Sergio Massa, uno de los candidatos presidenciales de Argentina, vestido con una camisa con lo que parecían ser medallas militares, señalando a un cielo azul. Lo rodeaban cientos de personas mayores —con atuendos monótonos, rostros serios y a menudo desfigurados— que lo miraban con esperanza.El estilo no era un error. El ilustrador había recibido instrucciones claras.“Ilustración de afiche de propaganda política soviética de Gustav Klutsis con un líder, masssa, de pie y firme”, decía un mensaje que la campaña de Massa introdujo en un programa de inteligencia artificial para producir la imagen. “Símbolos de unidad y poder llenan el entorno”, continuaba el comando o prompt. “La imagen irradia autoridad y determinación”.Javier Milei, el otro candidato en la segunda vuelta electoral del domingo, ha contraatacado compartiendo lo que parecen ser imágenes creadas con inteligencia artificial que representan a Massa como un líder comunista chino y a sí mismo como un adorable león de dibujos animados. Han sido vistas más de 30 millones de veces.Las elecciones argentinas se han convertido rápidamente en un campo de pruebas para la inteligencia artificial en las campañas electorales, con los dos candidatos y sus partidarios empleando la tecnología para adulterar imágenes y videos existentes y crear otros desde cero.La inteligencia artificial ha hecho que los candidatos digan cosas que no decían y los ha colocado en películas y memes famosos. Ha generado carteles de campaña y desencadenado debates sobre si los videos reales son efectivamente reales.El papel destacado de la inteligencia artificial en la campaña de Argentina y el debate político que ha suscitado subrayan la creciente prevalencia de la tecnología y demuestran que, con su creciente poder y su costo cada vez menor, es probable que ahora sea un factor en muchas elecciones democráticas de todo el mundo.Los expertos comparan este momento con los primeros días de las redes sociales, una tecnología que ofrece nuevas y tentadoras herramientas para la política, así como amenazas imprevistas.La campaña de Massa ha creado un sistema de inteligencia artificial que puede crear imágenes y videos de muchos de los principales protagonistas de las elecciones —los candidatos, los compañeros de fórmula, los aliados políticos— haciendo una gran variedad de cosas.La campaña ha usado inteligencia artificial para retratar a Massa, el serio ministro de Economía de centroizquierda, como fuerte, intrépido y carismático, incluyendo videos que lo muestran como soldado en una guerra, un Cazafantasmas e Indiana Jones, así como afiches que evocan al cartel “Hope” de la campaña de 2008 de Barack Obama y a una portada de The New Yorker.La campaña también ha usado al sistema para retratar al candidato oponente, Milei —un economista libertario de extrema derecha y figura televisiva conocida por sus arrebatos—, como inestable, colocándolo en películas como La naranja mecánica y Pánico y locura en Las Vegas.Mucho del contenido ha sido claramente falso. Pero un puñado de creaciones pisaron la línea de la desinformación. La campaña de Massa produjo un video ultrafalso, conocido como deepfake en inglés, en el cual Milei explica cómo funcionaría un mercado de órganos humanos, algo que él ha dicho que filosóficamente encaja con sus opiniones libertarias.“Imaginate tener hijos y pensar que cada uno de ellos es como una inversión a largo plazo. No en el sentido tradicional, sino pensando en el potencial económico de sus órganos en el futuro”, dice la imagen manipulada de Milei en el video falsificado, publicado por la campaña de Massa en su cuenta de Instagram para inteligencia artificial llamado IAxlaPatria.La leyenda de la publicación dice: “Le pedimos a una Inteligencia Artificial que lo ayude a Javier a explicar el negocio de la venta de órganos y esto sucedió”.En una entrevista, Massa dijo que la primera vez que vio lo que la inteligencia artificial podía hacer se quedó impactado. “No tenía la cabeza preparada para el mundo que me iba a tocar vivir a mí”, dijo. “Es un enorme desafío, estamos arriba de un caballo al que tenemos que cabalgar y no le conocemos las mañas”.The New York Times entonces le mostró el ultrafalso que su campaña había creado en donde aparece Milei hablando de los órganos humanos. Pareció perturbado. “Sobre ese uso no estoy de acuerdo”, dijo.Su vocero luego recalcó que la publicación era en broma y que estaba claramente etiquetada como generada por inteligencia artificial. Su campaña aseguró en un comunicado que su uso de la tecnología es para divertir y hacer observaciones políticas, no para engañar.Los investigadores hace tiempo que han expresado preocupación por los efectos de la IA en las elecciones. La tecnología tiene la capacidad de confundir y engañar a los votantes, crear dudas sobre lo que es real y añadir desinformación que puede propagarse por las redes sociales.Durante años, dichos temores han sido de carácter especulativo puesto que la tecnología para producir contenidos falsos de ese tipo era demasiado complicada, costosa y burda.“Ahora hemos visto esta total explosión de conjuntos de herramientas increíblemente accesibles y cada vez más potentes que se han democratizado, y esa apreciación ha cambiado de manera radical”, dijo Henry Ajder, experto afincado en Inglaterra que ha brindado asesoría a gobiernos sobre contenido generado con IA.Este año, un candidato a la alcaldía de Toronto empleó imágenes de personas sin hogar generadas por IA de tono sombrío para insinuar cómo sería Toronto si no resultaba electo. En Estados Unidos, el Partido Republicano publicó un video creado con IA que muestra a China invadiendo Taiwán y otras escenas distópicas para ilustrar lo que supuestamente sucedería si el presidente Biden ganara la reelección.Y la campaña del gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, compartió un video que mostraba imágenes generadas por IA donde aparece Donald Trump abrazando a Anthony Fauci, el médico que se ha convertido en enemigo de la derecha estadounidense por su papel como líder de la respuesta nacional frente a la pandemia.Hasta ahora, el contenido generado por IA compartido por las campañas en Argentina ha sido etiquetado para identificar su origen o es una falsificación tan evidente que es poco probable que engañe incluso a los votantes más crédulos. Más bien, la tecnología ha potenciado la capacidad de crear contenido viral que antiguamente habría requerido el trabajo de equipos enteros de diseñadores gráficos durante días o semanas.Meta, la empresa dueña de Facebook e Instagram, dijo esta semana que iba a exigir que los avisos políticos indiquen si usaron IA. Otras publicaciones no pagadas en sitios que emplean esa tecnología, incluso relacionados con política, no iban a requerir indicar tal información. La Comisión Federal de Elecciones en EE. UU. también está evaluando si va a regular el uso de IA en propaganda política.El Instituto de Diálogo Estratégico, un grupo de investigación con sede en Londres que estudia las plataformas de internet, firmó una carta en la que se hace un llamado a implementar este tipo de regulaciones. Isabelle Frances-Wright, la directora de tecnología y sociedad del grupo, comentó que el uso extenso de IA en las elecciones argentinas era preocupante.“Sin duda considero que es un terreno resbaladizo”, dijo. “De aquí a un año lo que ya se ve muy real solo lo parecerá más”.La campaña de Massa dijo que decidió usar IA en un esfuerzo por mostrar que el peronismo, el movimiento político de 78 años de antigüedad que respalda a Massa, es capaz de atraer a los votantes jóvenes al rodear la imagen de Massa de cultura pop y de memes.Imagen generada con IA por la campaña de MassaPara lograrlo, ingenieros y artistas de la campaña subieron a un programa de código abierto llamado Stable Diffusion fotografías de distintas figuras políticas argentinas a fin de entrenar a su sistema de IA para que creara imágenes falsas de esas personas reales. Ahora pueden producir con rapidez una imagen o un video en donde aparezcan más de una decena de notables personalidades de la política de Argentina haciendo prácticamente lo que le indiquen.Durante la campaña, el equipo de comunicación de Massa instruyó a los artistas que trabajaban con la IA de la campaña sobre los mensajes o emociones que deseaban suscitar con las imágenes, por ejemplo: unidad nacional, valores familiares o miedo. Los artistas luego hacían lluvia de ideas para insertar a Massa o a Milei, así como a otros políticos, en contenido que evoca películas, memes, estilos artísticos o momentos históricos.Para Halloween, la campaña de Massa le pidió a su IA que creara una serie de imágenes caricaturescas de Milei y sus aliados en donde parecieran zombis. La campaña también empleó IA para crear un tráiler cinematográfico dramático en donde aparece Buenos Aires en llamas, Milei como un villano malvado en una camisa de fuerza y Massa en el papel del héroe que va a salvar el país.Las imágenes de IA también han hecho su aparición en el mundo real. Los afiches soviéticos estuvieron entre las decenas de diseños que campaña y seguidores de Massa imprimieron y pegaron en los espacios públicos de Argentina.Algunas imágenes fueron generadas por la IA de la campaña mientras que otras fueron creadas por simpatizantes que usaron IA, entre ellas una de las más conocidas, una en la que Massa monta un caballo al estilo de José de San Martín, héroe de la independencia argentina.“Massa estaba muy acartonado”, dijo Octavio Tome, organizador comunitario que ayudó a crear la imagen. “Esa imagen da un Massa con impronta jefe. Hay algo muy fuerte de la argentinidad”.Simpatizantes de Massa colocaron afiches generados con IA en donde aparece como el prócer de la independencia argentina José de San Martín.Sarah Pabst para The New York TimesEl surgimiento de la inteligencia artificial en las elecciones argentinas también ha causado que algunos votantes duden de la realidad. Luego de que la semana pasada circuló un video en donde se veía a Massa exhausto tras un acto de campaña, sus críticos lo acusaron de estar drogado. Sus seguidores rápidamente respondieron que el video en realidad era un deepfake.No obstante, su campaña confirmó que el video era, en efecto, real.Massa comentó que la gente ya estaba usando la tecnología para intentar encubrir errores del pasado o escándalos. “Es muy fácil escudarse en la inteligencia artificial cuando aparecen cosas que dijiste y no querías que se supieran”, dijo Massa en la entrevista.Al principio de la contienda, Patricia Bullrich, una candidata que no logró pasar a la segunda vuelta, intentó explicar que eran falsas unas grabaciones de audio filtradas en donde su asesor económico le ofrecía trabajo a una mujer a cambio de sexo. “Te hacen voces con inteligencia artificial, te recortan videos, te meten audios que nadie sabe de dónde salen”, dijo.No está claro si los audios eran falsos o reales.Jack Nicas es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Brasil, que abarca Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Anteriormente reportó sobre tecnología desde San Francisco y, antes de integrarse al Times en 2018, trabajó siete años en The Wall Street Journal. Más de Jack Nicas More

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      Is Argentina the First A.I. Election?

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      The posters dotting the streets of Buenos Aires had a certain Soviet flare to them.There was one of Argentina’s presidential candidates, Sergio Massa, dressed in a shirt with what appeared to be military medals, pointing to a blue sky. He was surrounded by hundreds of older people — in drab clothing, with serious, and often disfigured, faces — looked toward him in hope.The style was no mistake. The illustrator had been given clear instructions.“Sovietic Political propaganda poster illustration by Gustav Klutsis featuring a leader, masssa, standing firmly,” said a prompt that Mr. Massa’s campaign fed into an artificial-intelligence program to produce the image. “Symbols of unity and power fill the environment,” the prompt continued. “The image exudes authority and determination.”Javier Milei, the other candidate in Sunday’s runoff election, has struck back by sharing what appear to be A.I. images depicting Mr. Massa as a Chinese communist leader and himself as a cuddly cartoon lion. They have been viewed more than 30 million times.Argentina’s election has quickly become a testing ground for A.I. in campaigns, with the two candidates and their supporters employing the technology to doctor existing images and videos and create others from scratch.A.I. has made candidates say things they did not, and put them in famous movies and memes. It has created campaign posters, and triggered debates over whether real videos are actually real.A.I.’s prominent role in Argentina’s campaign and the political debate it has set off underscore the technology’s growing prevalence and show that, with its expanding power and falling cost, it is now likely to be a factor in many democratic elections around the globe.Experts compare the moment to the early days of social media, a technology offering tantalizing new tools for politics — and unforeseen threats.Mr. Massa’s campaign has created an A.I. system that can create images and videos of many of the election’s main players — the candidates, running mates, political allies — doing a wide variety of things. The campaign has used A.I. to portray Mr. Massa, Argentina’s staid center-left economy minister, as strong, fearless and charismatic, including videos that show him as a soldier in war, a Ghostbuster and Indiana Jones, as well as posters that evoke Barack Obama’s 2008 “Hope” poster and a cover of The New Yorker.The campaign has also used the system to depict his opponent, Mr. Milei — a far-right libertarian economist and television personality known for outbursts — as unstable, putting him in films like “Clockwork Orange” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”Much of the content has been clearly fake. But a few creations have toed the line of disinformation. The Massa campaign produced one “deepfake” video in which Mr. Milei explains how a market for human organs would work, something he has said philosophically fits in with his libertarian views.“Imagine having kids and thinking that each is a long-term investment. Not in the traditional sense, but thinking of the economic potential of their organs,” says the manipulated image of Mr. Milei in the fabricated video, posted by the Massa campaign on its Instagram account for A.I. content, called “A.I. for the Homeland.”The post’s caption says, “We asked an Artificial Intelligence to help Javier explain the business of selling organs and this happened.”In an interview, Mr. Massa said he was shocked the first time he saw what A.I. could do. “I didn’t have my mind prepared for the world that I’m going to live in,” he said. “It’s a huge challenge. We’re on a horse that we have to ride but we still don’t know its tricks.”The New York Times then showed him the deepfake his campaign created of Mr. Milei and human organs. He appeared disturbed. “I don’t agree with that use,” he said.His spokesman later stressed that the post was in jest and clearly labeled A.I.-generated. His campaign said in a statement that its use of A.I. is to entertain and make political points, not deceive.Researchers have long worried about the impact of A.I. on elections. The technology can deceive and confuse voters, casting doubt over what is real, adding to the disinformation that can be spread by social networks.For years, those fears had largely been speculative because the technology to produce such fakes was too complicated, expensive and unsophisticated.“Now we’ve seen this absolute explosion of incredibly accessible and increasingly powerful democratized tool sets, and that calculation has radically changed,” said Henry Ajder, an expert based in England who has advised governments on A.I.-generated content.This year, a mayoral candidate in Toronto used gloomy A.I.-generated images of homeless people to telegraph what Toronto would turn into if he weren’t elected. In the United States, the Republican Party posted a video created with A.I. that shows China invading Taiwan and other dystopian scenes to depict what it says would happen if President Biden wins a second term.And the campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida shared a video showing A.I.-generated images of Donald J. Trump hugging Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who has become an enemy on the American right for his role leading the nation’s pandemic response.So far, the A.I.-generated content shared by the campaigns in Argentina has either been labeled A.I. generated or is so clearly fabricated that it is unlikely it would deceive even the most credulous voters. Instead, the technology has supercharged the ability to create viral content that previously would have taken teams of graphic designers days or weeks to complete.Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, said this week that it would require political ads to disclose whether they used A.I. Other unpaid posts on the sites that use A.I., even if related to politics, would not be required to carry any disclosures. The U.S. Federal Election Commission is also considering whether to regulate the use of A.I. in political ads.The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based research group that studies internet platforms, signed a letter urging such regulations. Isabelle Frances-Wright, the group’s head of technology and society, said the extensive use of A.I. in Argentina’s election was worrisome.“I absolutely think it’s a slippery slope,” she said. “In a year from now, what already seems very realistic will only seem more so.” The Massa campaign said it decided to use A.I. in an effort to show that Peronism, the 78-year-old political movement behind Mr. Massa, can appeal to young voters by mixing Mr. Massa’s image with pop and meme culture.An A.I.-generated image created by Mr. Massa’s campaign.To do so, campaign engineers and artists fed photos of Argentina’s various political players into an open-source software called Stable Diffusion to train their own A.I. system so that it could create fake images of those real people. They can now quickly produce an image or video of more than a dozen top political players in Argentina doing almost anything they ask.During the campaign, Mr. Massa’s communications team has briefed artists working with the campaign’s A.I. on which messages or emotions they want the images to impart, such as national unity, family values and fear. The artists have then brainstormed ideas to put Mr. Massa or Mr. Milei, as well as other political figures, into content that references films, memes, artistic styles or moments in history.For Halloween, the Massa campaign told its A.I. to create a series of cartoonish images of Mr. Milei and his allies as zombies. The campaign also used A.I. to create a dramatic movie trailer, featuring Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, burning, Mr. Milei as an evil villain in a straitjacket and Mr. Massa as the hero who will save the country.The A.I. images have also shown up in the real world. The Soviet posters were one of the dozens of designs that Mr. Massa’s campaign and supporters printed to post across Argentina’s public spaces.Some images were generated by the campaign’s A.I., while others were created by supporters using A.I., including one of the most well-known, an image of Mr. Massa riding a horse in the style of José de San Martín, an Argentine independence hero. “Massa was too stiff,” said Octavio Tome, a community organizer who helped create the image. “We’re showing a boss-like Massa, and he’s very Argentine.”Supporters of Mr. Massa put up AI-generated posters depicting him in the style of José de San Martín, an Argentine independence hero.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesThe rise of A.I. in Argentina’s election has also made some voters question what is real. After a video circulated last week of Mr. Massa looking exhausted after a campaign event, his critics accused him of being on drugs. His supporters quickly struck back, claiming the video was actually a deepfake.His campaign confirmed, however, that the video was, in fact, real.Mr. Massa said people were already using A.I. to try to cover up past mistakes or scandals. “It’s very easy to hide behind artificial intelligence when something you said come out, and you didn’t want them to,” Mr. Massa said in the interview.Earlier in the race, Patricia Bullrich, a candidate who failed to qualify for the runoff, tried to explain away leaked audio recordings of her economic adviser offering a woman a job in exchange for sex by saying the recordings were fabricated. “They can fake voices, alter videos,” she said.Were the recordings real or fake? It’s unclear. More

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      Israel Agrees to Short Pauses in Gaza Fighting, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes.For a few hours daily, residents of northern Gaza have used pauses in the fighting by the Israeli military to make their way south.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Israel Has Agreed to Regular Daily Four-Hour Pauses for Civilians to Flee, The White House saidExplosion Rocks a Gaza HospitalJoe Manchin’s Retirement Adds Fuel to 2024 RumorsHouse Republicans Clash Over Spending Days Ahead of Shutdown DeadlineEmily Lang More

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      Donald Trump Has Closed the Republican Mind

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      Over the past half-century, one of the books that most electrified conservatives was Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind.” Bloom, a political philosopher, warned of the dangers posed by moral relativism and nihilism, of “accepting everything and denying reason’s power.”The book, published in 1987, sold more than a million copies and spent 10 weeks at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. It argued that the denial of truth and the suppression of reason was leading to a civilizational crisis — and the fault for this lay at the feet of the New Left.At the time, I worked in the Reagan administration. I was a young speechwriter for William Bennett at the Department of Education, deeply interested in political ideas and the cultivation of intellectual and moral virtue. The state of higher education, which was the focal point of Mr. Bloom’s concerns, was of great interest to me. But so was his broader warning about the “relativity of truth,” the loss of moral order, the lack of critical thinking and “spiritual entropy.”Mr. Bloom believed a truly liberal education would help people resist the “worship of vulgar success.” He lamented the failure of universities to put “the permanent questions” of human life and human meaning front and center.Taken together, those were currents of thought that I and other conservatives believed were threats to flourishing lives and a decent, just society. The poet Frederick Turner described “The Closing of the American Mind” as “the most thoughtful conservative analysis of the nation’s cultural sickness.”Yet today it is the American right that most fully embodies the attitudes that so alarmed Mr. Bloom. We see that most clearly in the right’s embrace of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he represents. Mr. Trump is cruel and remorseless, compulsive and vindictive, an accomplished conspiracy theorist. He delights in inflaming hatreds and shattering moral codes.No other president has been as disdainful of knowledge or as untroubled by his benightedness. No other has been as intentional not just to lie but to annihilate truth. And no other president has explicitly attempted to overturn an election and encouraged an angry mob to march on the Capitol.With every passing week, the former president’s statements are getting more deranged, more menacing and more authoritarian. Mr. Trump has taken to verbally attacking judges and prosecutors in his various criminal trials; mocked last year’s brutal hammer attack against the husband of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House at the time, which left him with a skull fracture; and suggested that the conduct of Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was deserving of execution. While doing this, Mr. Trump has expanded his lead over his nearest rival in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination to more than 40 points.In other words, no matter how much wrongdoing Mr. Trump engages in, however outrageous and brutish his conduct, he remains wildly popular. His indecency and sulfuric rhetoric are a plus; his most loyal supporters are galvanized by the criminal charges against him, which they consider political persecution. He is their beau ideal, and he has spawned hundreds of imitators — in the presidential campaign that he is dominating, in Congress, among governors, in state legislatures and in the right-wing ecosystem. The haunting question raised by Mr. Bloom is more relevant now than it was when he first posed it: “When there are no shared goals or a vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?”So how did a party and a political movement that once saw itself as a vanguard of objective truth end up on the side that gets to make up its own facts, its own scripts, its own realities?Rich Tafel, the chief executive of Public Squared, developed a training called Cultural Translation, which teaches participants how to find shared values to build bridges across different worldviews. He told me the narrative he’s heard from people on the right is that they tried fighting the left for years, nominating admirable people like John McCain and Mitt Romney, but these leaders failed to understand how the game had changed. “Those on the right argue that claiming that there are objective truths and hard realities didn’t work against the identity politics of the postmodern left,” according to Mr. Tafel. “Now, they’d say, they are playing by the same rules.” In fact, he said, “MAGA has weaponized postmodernism in a way the left never did.”Mr. Tafel added that MAGA world “likes the trolling nature of the postmodern right and the vicious attacks” against those they oppose. “The right likes the snark, irony and sarcasm of it all.”Those who once celebrated the three transcendentals — the true, the good and the beautiful — now delight in deceit, coarseness and squalor. Jonathan Rauch, a friend and sometime collaborator, calls this a “degenerate postmodernism.”Mr. Rauch’s book “The Constitution of Knowledge” examined the collapse of shared standards of truth. He suggested that the incentive structure on the right has played an indispensable role in its epistemic crisis. Right-wing media discovered that spreading lies, inflaming resentments and stoking nihilism were extremely profitable because there was an enormous audience for it. Republican politicians similarly found they could energize their base by doing the same. Initially, the media and politicians cynically exploited these tactics; soon they became dependent on them. “They got high on their own supply and couldn’t stop using without infuriating the base,” as Mr. Rauch put it. There was nothing they would not defend, no exit ramp they would take.Many of those on the right, dependent on the web of lies and the nihilism, have twisted themselves into knots in order to justify their behavior not just to others but also to themselves. It’s too painful for them to acknowledge the destructive movement that they have become part of or to acknowledge that it is no longer by any means clear who is leading whom. So they have persuaded themselves that there is no other option but to support a Trump-led Republican Party, even one that is lawless and depraved, because the Democratic Party is, for them, an unthinkable alternative. The result is that they have been sucked, cognitively and psychologically, into their own alternative reality, a psychedelic collage made up of what Kellyanne Conway, a former counselor to Mr. Trump, famously called “alternative facts.”The original left-wing version of postmodernism that Mr. Bloom complained about was corrosive for the reasons he discussed, and it still is, but the right-wing version is several orders of magnitude more cynical, irrational and destructive. Nihilism is a choice — it is forced on no one — and conservatives must somehow find a way to turn back toward their original ideals.The core concern expressed by Mr. Bloom more than 35 years ago was that relativism and nihilism would lead to impoverished souls, especially among the young, the decomposition of America’s social contract and its political culture, and a “chaos of the instincts or passions.” His worst fears have been realized. What Mr. Bloom could not have imagined is that it would be the right that would be the author of this catastrophe.Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) — a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      El delicado tema de la bebida de Giuliani

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      Era difícil no ver a Rudolph Giuliani en el Grand Havana Room, el club de puros del Midtown que seguía tratándolo como el rey de Nueva York y que era un imán para simpatizantes y curiosos.En los últimos años, muchos de sus allegados temían que cada vez fuera más difícil no verlo.Durante más de una década la forma de beber de Giuliani había sido un problema, admitieron con tristeza sus amigos. Y, a medida que recuperaba protagonismo durante la presidencia de Donald Trump, cada vez era más complicado ocultarlo.Algunas noches, cuando Giuliani se pasaba de copas, algún colaborador/socio hacía discretamente una seña al resto del club: la mano vacía, inclinada hacia atrás en un gesto de beber y fuera de la vista del exalcalde, por si los demás preferían mantener las distancias. Algunos aliados, al ver a Giuliani bebiendo whisky antes de salir en las entrevistas de Fox News, se escabullían en busca de un televisor, para mirar con tensión sus pobres defensas de Trump.Incluso en lugares menos bulliciosos —la fiesta de presentación de un libro, una cena por el aniversario del 11 de septiembre, una reunión íntima en el propio apartamento de Giuliani— su constante y llamativa embriaguez a menudo asustaba a sus acompañantes.“No es ningún secreto, ni le hago ningún favor si no menciono ese problema, porque lo tiene”, dijo Andrew Stein, expresidente del Concejo Municipal de Nueva York que conoce a Giuliani desde hace décadas. “De hecho, es una de las cosas más tristes que creo que pasan en la política”.Nadie cercano a Giuliani, de 79 años, ha insinuado que su forma de beber pueda excusar o explicar su actual deterioro legal y personal. En agosto fue a Georgia para que le hicieran una ficha policial, no por su comportamiento nocturno ni por sus imprudentes entrevistas por cable, sino por presuntamente hacer mal uso de las leyes que defendía con ahínco cuando era fiscal federal, subvirtiendo así la democracia de un país que antaño lo idolatraba.Sin embargo, según sus amigos, para casi cualquier persona cercana los hábitos de bebida de Giuliani han sido el patrón que ha marcado su caída y no la causa del colapso de su reputación. Esta forma de beber, aseguran, ha sido la evidencia omnipresente de que algo no iba bien con el lugarteniente más incauto del expresidente mucho antes del día de las elecciones de 2020.Ahora, los fiscales en el caso electoral federal contra Trump se enfocan en los hábitos de bebida de Giuliani y muestran interés en saber si el expresidente ignoró lo que sus ayudantes describieron como la embriaguez evidente del exalcalde que en los documentos judiciales es mencionado como “Co-conspirador 1”.Los riesgos legales que comparten han convertido un asunto sobre el que durante mucho tiempo han susurrado antiguos ayudantes del Ayuntamiento, asesores de la Casa Blanca y las altas esferas de la política en una subtrama de investigación en un caso sin precedentes.La oficina de Jack Smith, el fiscal especial, ha interrogado a testigos sobre el consumo de alcohol de Giuliani cuando asesoraba a Trump, incluida la noche de las elecciones, según una persona familiarizada con el tema. Los investigadores de Smith también han preguntado sobre el nivel de conocimiento de Trump sobre el consumo de alcohol de su abogado, mientras trabajaban para anular las elecciones y evitar que Joe Biden fuera certificado como ganador de 2020 casi a cualquier precio. (Un portavoz del fiscal especial declinó hacer comentarios).Giuliani fue uno de los rostros más públicos del esfuerzo de Trump por revertir las elecciones de 2020.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLas respuestas a esas preguntas podrían complicar cualquier esfuerzo del equipo de Trump para apoyarse en la llamada defensa del consejo del abogado, una estrategia que podría presentarlo como un cliente que solo seguía las indicaciones profesionales de sus abogados. Si esa orientación procedía de alguien que Trump sabía que estaba incapacitado por el alcohol, especialmente cuando muchos otros le dijeron al exmandatario que definitivamente había perdido, su argumento podría debilitarse.En entrevistas y testimonios ante el Congreso, varias personas que se encontraban en la Casa Blanca durante la noche de las elecciones —la noche en la que Giuliani instó a Trump a declarar su victoria, a pesar de los resultados— han dicho que el exalcalde parecía estar borracho, que arrastraba las palabras y olía a alcohol.“El alcalde estaba definitivamente intoxicado”, dijo Jason Miller, uno de los principales asesores de Trump y veterano de la campaña presidencial de Giuliani en 2008, al comité del Congreso que investiga el ataque del 6 de enero en el Capitolio en una declaración a principios del año pasado. “Pero no conozco su nivel de intoxicación cuando habló con el presidente”. (Giuliani negó furiosamente esta versión y condenó en términos despiadados a Miller, que había hablado elogiosamente de él en público).En privado, Trump, que desde hace tiempo se describe como abstemio, ha hablado con sorna de la forma de beber de Giuliani, según una persona familiarizada con sus comentarios. Pero los monólogos de Trump a sus colaboradores pueden revelar una visión del exalcalde que muchos republicanos comparten: atribuye a Giuliani el cambio de la ciudad de Nueva York tras las décadas de 1970 y 1980, de alta criminalidad, y afirma que ha sufrido últimamente sin él al mando. Luego vuelve a lamentarse de la imagen actual de Giuliani.Trump no se detiene en su propio papel en esa trayectoria.En una declaración en la que no se abordaron versiones específicas sobre la bebida de Giuliani o su posible relevancia para los fiscales, Ted Goodman, un asesor político del exalcalde, elogió la carrera de Giuliani y sugirió que estaba siendo difamado porque “tiene el coraje de defender a un hombre inocente” refiriéndose a Trump.“Estoy con el alcalde regularmente desde hace un año, y la idea de que es alcohólico es una mentira absoluta”, dijo Goodman, añadiendo que “se ha puesto de moda en ciertos círculos difamar al alcalde en un esfuerzo de no perder el favor de la llamada ‘alta sociedad’ de Nueva York y del circuito de cócteles de Washington, D. C.”.“El Rudy Giuliani que todos ven hoy”, continuó Goodman, “es el mismo que acabó con la mafia, limpió las calles de Nueva York y consoló a la nación tras el 11-S”.Un portavoz de Trump no respondió a una petición de comentarios.Muchos de los que conocen bien a Giuliani se cuidan de hablar de su vida, y especialmente de su forma de beber, con muchos matices. Dicen que la mayoría de los elementos del actual Giuliani siempre estuvieron ahí, aunque menos visibles.Mucho antes de que el alcohol se convirtiera en un problema, Giuliani tenía inclinación a hacer afirmaciones generalizadas e infundadas de fraude electoral. (“Me robaron las elecciones”, dijo una vez sobre su derrota como alcalde en 1989, aludiendo a supuestas artimañas “en las zonas negras de Brooklyn y en Washington Heights”).Mucho antes de que el alcohol se convirtiera en un problema podía arremeter contra enemigos reales o supuestos. (“Un hombre pequeño en busca de balcón”, dijo en una ocasión Jimmy Breslin, refiriéndose a Giuliani).En las entrevistas con amigos, colaboradores y antiguos ayudantes, el consenso era que, más que transformar por completo a Giuliani, la bebida había acelerado un cambio en su alquimia, al amplificar características que tenía desde hace mucho tiempo como conspiracionismo, credulidad, debilidad por la grandeza.Amante de la ópera —con un sentido operístico de su propia historia—, Giuliani lleva mucho tiempo invitando a sus seguidores, como ha hecho Trump, a procesar sus pruebas personales como propias, arrastrando a las masas a través del tumulto, la tragedia y el divorcio público.Sin embargo, ahora su mundo es pequeño, se estrecha para reflejar sus circunstancias.En agosto, Giuliani ingresó en la cárcel del condado de Fulton, en Atlanta, tras ser acusado en un amplio caso de chantaje contra Trump y sus aliados.  Brynn Anderson/Associated PressSe enfrenta a una acusación de chantaje (entre otras) en Georgia, a un caso de difamación interpuesto por dos trabajadores electorales y a acusaciones de conducta sexual inapropiada por parte de una antigua empleada (él ha dicho que se trató de una relación consentida) y de una antigua ayudante de la Casa Blanca (él ha negado esta versión).Uno de sus abogados ha dicho que Giuliani está “a punto de quebrar”. Otro, Robert Costello, antaño protegido del exalcalde, lo ha demandado por impago de honorarios legales.El círculo de Giuliani se ha reducido debido al alejamiento de sus viejos amigos. Su licencia de abogado fue suspendida en Nueva York. El Grand Havana Room cerró en 2020.La mayoría de los días, Giuliani presenta un programa de radio en Manhattan y se detiene para hacerse selfis en la acera con algún que otro desconocido.La mayoría de las noches, se queda para emitir en directo desde el apartamento que compartió durante mucho tiempo con su tercera exesposa, Judith Giuliani. Recientemente lo ha puesto a la venta.“A Rudy le encanta la ópera”, dijo William Bratton, su primer comisario de policía, a quien Giuliani una vez le regaló una colección de discos de La Bohème. “Pocas óperas tienen un final feliz”.Una derrota aplastante y una preocupación crecienteGiuliani grabando su programa de radio semanal desde su despacho en el Ayuntamiento en mayo de 2000.Ruby Washington/The New York TimesGiuliani siempre fue el tipo de funcionario electo que mantuvo ocupados a los investigadores de la oposición: enredos amorosos, conflictos de personal, un montón de comentarios incendiarios.Pero mientras se preparaba para la vida después del Ayuntamiento —montando una efímera campaña para el Senado en el año 2000 y expresando sus aspiraciones presidenciales— los funcionarios demócratas dijeron que la bebida de Giuliani fue un tema que nunca salió a relucir.Había una razón para eso. Como alcalde, según sus antiguos colaboradores, Giuliani no solía beber en exceso y esperaba que su equipo siguiera su ejemplo.En parte, parece que eso se debía a su inseguridad: criado a las afueras de Manhattan en una familia de medios modestos, Giuliani siempre tuvo cuidado de no perder la cabeza, según un alto funcionario municipal, porque no quería bajar la guardia ante las élites neoyorquinas.Otra consideración era práctica. Giuliani estaba encantado con la naturaleza de la alcaldía a toda hora y se apresuraba a acudir a los escenarios de emergencia para proyectar autoridad y control mucho antes de que le revelara ese instinto al resto del mundo durante los ataques del 11 de septiembre.Nadie duda de que el atentado, y su perfil ascendente, lo reconfiguraron de manera profunda. El 10 de septiembre de 2001, era un caso perdido por su carácter polarizador que lo había llevado a enemistarse con los artistas, además de criticar duramente a los propietarios de hurones y defender a su departamento de policía durante los sonados asesinatos de hombres negros desarmados, incluyendo un episodio en el que Giuliani atacó al fallecido y autorizó la publicación de su expediente de arresto.Pero, a mediados de semana, se había convertido en un emblema mundial de tenaz determinación, llegando a ser considerado el hombre esencial de la ciudad. (Giuliani no tardó en verse a sí mismo de esta manera: a pocas semanas de las elecciones para sucederlo, empezó a presionar a fines de septiembre para aplazar la fecha de entrada en funciones del próximo alcalde y permanecer en el cargo unos meses más. Según George Pataki, exgobernador republicano, le pidió que ampliara su mandato. La idea tuvo pocos adeptos y fue descartada).El prestigio político de Giuliani creció tras los atentados terroristas del 11 de septiembre de 2001. El año pasado, fue criticado por decir que fue “en cierto modo, el mejor día de mi vida”.Robert F. Bukaty/Associated PressLos años siguientes fueron un torbellino de duelo y celebridad —recuerdos desgarradores, negocios lucrativos, un título honorífico de caballero británico—, una tensión que pareciera que Giuliani todavía lucha por superar.El año pasado fue criticado por calificar el 11 de septiembre como “en cierto modo, el mejor día de mi vida”. También da la impresión de que los recuerdos de ese día lo persiguen, sin importar las puertas que le abrió: en 2018, después de una colonoscopia, contó que le informaron que durante el procedimiento estuvo hablando dormido como si estuviera estableciendo un centro de comando en la zona cero cuando cayeron las torres.Se suponía que la gestión de Giuliani en la crisis impulsaría su campaña presidencial, planeada desde hace tiempo, y lo consagraría como el principal candidato republicano en 2008. Pero no fue así.En cambio, los primeros relatos sobre el consumo excesivo de alcohol por parte de Giuliani se remontan a ese período de fracaso electoral. Aunque cualquier fracaso político puede molestar, quienes conocen a Giuliani dicen que esta, su primera derrota en casi dos décadas, fue especialmente devastadora.Cuando su gran apuesta electoral en Florida acabó en una humillación, Giuliani cayó en lo que Judith Giuliani calificó más tarde como una depresión clínica. Se quedó durante semanas en Mar-a-Lago, el club de Trump en Florida. Los dos no eran muy amigos, pero se conocían desde hacía años a través de la política neoyorquina y el sector inmobiliario.Durante su campaña presidencial en 2008, Giuliani apostó fuerte por tener una buena actuación en Florida, pero terminó de tercero, por lo que renunció un día después.Chip Litherland para The New York TimesPor ese entonces, Giuliani bebía en exceso, según declaraciones de Judith Giuliani a Andrew Kirtzman, autor de Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, publicado el año pasado.“Literalmente se caía de borracho”, dijo Kirtzman en una entrevista, señalando que varios incidentes a lo largo de los años, según la esposa de Giuliani, requirieron atención médica. Kirtzman dijo que llegó a considerar la bebida de Giuliani como “parte de la erosión general de su autodisciplina”. (Giuliani ha dicho que pasó un mes “relajándose” en Mar-a-Lago. El abogado de Judith Giuliani expresó su decisión de no ser entrevistada).Algunos de los que se reunieron con Giuliani después de la campaña quedaron impresionados por su evidente falta de atención, por su desesperación por recuperar lo que había perdido.George Arzt, antiguo ayudante del exalcalde Edward Koch, con quien Giuliani se enfrentó a menudo, recordaba haberlo visto deambular en bucle por un restaurante de los Hamptons, como si esperara a que alguien lo parara, mientras el resto de su grupo cenaba en un salón trasero.“Caminaba de un lado a otro como si quisiera que todo el mundo lo viera, más de una vez”, dijo Arzt. “Solo quería que lo reconocieran”.Las personas cercanas a Giuliani se preocuparon especialmente cuando su tercer matrimonio empezó a resquebrajarse, y se inquietaron por el comportamiento que llegó a mostrar incluso en reuniones nominalmente oficiales, como una cena anual para estrechos colaboradores en torno al 11 de septiembre.Giuliani y su esposa de ese entonces, Judith Giuliani, de pie a la derecha, en 2005. Ella ha dicho que el exalcalde cayó en una depresión y bebió mucho tras perder las elecciones de 2008.Bill Cunningham/The New York TimesEn casi cualquier compañía, Giuliani parecía propenso a montar una escena. En mayo de 2016, estropeó una importante cena con los clientes del bufete de abogados al que se había unido recientemente con una serie comentarios islamófobos mientras estaba borracho, según un libro del año pasado de Geoffrey Berman, quien luego se convertiría en el fiscal federal en Manhattan.En la cena del aniversario del 11 de septiembre de ese año, según recuerda un antiguo colaborador, Giuliani parecía que estaba embriagado mientras pronunciaba unas palabras que fueron de un partidismo despiadado, y un tono discordante para los invitados, dado el acontecimiento que se conmemoraba.Al año siguiente, según recuerda una persona que solía asistir a esos eventos, se suspendió la cena tradicional. Semanas antes del aniversario, Giuliani tuvo que ser ingresado en el hospital por una lesión en la pierna.Después de beber demasiado, diría más tarde Judith Giuliani, el exalcalde había sufrido una caída.Imprudencia, agravios y mayor aislamientoGiuliani y Trump en septiembre de 2020. El exalcalde sigue elogiando al expresidente y le ha pedido ayuda económica.Al Drago para The New York TimesA pocos días del final de la presidencia de Trump ―y con el fantasma de un segundo juicio político acechando tras el motín del Capitolio―, Giuliani no fue ambiguo.A falta de aliados y en busca de otro escenario público, el exalcalde no solo quería representar a Trump ante el Senado. “Tengo que ser su abogado”, le dijo Giuliani a un confidente, según una persona con conocimiento directo de la conversación.Para ese entonces, gran parte de la órbita de Trump estaba convencida de que era una mala idea. Los esfuerzos legales de Giuliani desde las elecciones habían fracasado rotundamente. Fue el causante de luchas internas, destacadas por el correo electrónico que un asociado suyo le envió a los funcionarios de la campaña pidiendo que Giuliani recibiera 20.000 dólares diarios por su trabajo (Giuliani ha dicho que desconocía esa petición). También estaba destinado a ser un testigo potencial.La incursión de Giuliani en la política ucraniana ya había contribuido al primer juicio político de Trump. Y, durante años, algunos funcionarios en la Casa Blanca habían visto la indisciplina e imprevisibilidad de Giuliani ―su red de negocios en el extranjero, sus misteriosos compañeros de viaje y, a menudo, su forma de beber― como un importante lastre.Antes de algunas de las participaciones televisivas de Giuliani, se sabía que los aliados del presidente compartían mensajes sobre el estado nocturno del exalcalde mientras bebía en el Trump International Hotel de Washington, donde Giuliani era tan asiduo que se colocó una placa personalizada en su mesa: “Despacho privado de Rudolph W. Giuliani”. (“Se notaba”, dijo un asesor de Trump sobre las noches en que Giuliani salía al aire después de beber).Giuliani ha dicho que no cree haber concedido nunca una entrevista estando borracho. “Me gusta el whisky”, le dijo a NBC New York en 2021. Y añadió: “No soy alcohólico. Soy funcional. Probablemente funciono más eficazmente que el 90 por ciento de la población”.En el Grand Havana de Nueva York, algunas personas se apartaban cuando las conversaciones casi a gritos de Giuliani lo delataban.“La gente pasaba por ahí después de que empezaba a beber mucho y actuaban como si no estuviera”, dijo el reverendo Al Sharpton, un viejo antagonista y compañero en el club de fumadores. (Sharpton dijo que solía hacer una broma: a veces, tanto él como otras personas que se oponían a Trump, animaban juguetonamente a un mesero para que le llevara más licor a Giuliani antes de que participara en Fox).Pero Sharpton atribuyó los problemas del exalcalde a un vicio diferente, como muchos amigos han hecho en privado.Cuando empezó a perseguir a Trump, me dije: “Este tipo es adicto a las cámaras”, recordó Sharpton. Y añadió que Giuliani “tenía que conocer los aspectos negativos de Donald Trump”. En poco tiempo, observó Sharpton, Giuliani “estaba con tipos a los que habría metido en la cárcel cuando era fiscal”.Es posible que Giuliani parezca nostálgico de los días en que tenía tanta influencia, y se muestre dispuesto a saldar viejas cuentas y destruir a nuevos adversarios, mientras insiste en que se le niega lo que le corresponde.El mes pasado, al reflexionar sobre la muerte de su segundo comisionado de policía, Howard Safir, Giuliani se desvió repentinamente durante su transmisión en directo y divagó al estilo de Trump, aprovechando la ocasión para desprestigiar al predecesor de Safir, Bratton, con quien se enemistó.“Quizá el hecho de que Bratton fuera a Elaine’s todas las noches y se emborrachara lo ayudó”, dijo Giuliani. (“Si el programa no fuera tan triste, sería divertidísimo”, dijo Bratton a través de un mensaje de texto).Otras quejas de Giuliani son más actuales. Ha reclamado en repetidas oportunidades porque Fox News ha dejado de invitarlo a sus programas, a pesar de que se esforzó por sacar a la luz los escándalos que rodeaban a Hunter Biden ―y fue vilipendiado por eso― mucho antes de que se convirtieran en un tema importante en los debates republicanos.Una participación televisiva de Giuliani que fue proyectada durante una audiencia celebrada el año pasado por el comité de la Cámara de Representantes que investigaba los disturbios del Capitolio y los acontecimientos que los rodearon.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEn 2021, las autoridades federales registraron el domicilio de Giuliani y confiscaron sus dispositivos en el marco de una investigación que originó titulares vergonzosos pero que, en última instancia, no ocasionaron cargos, lo que exacerbó aún más su sentimiento de persecución.También es posible que parezca herido, porque algunos amigos del pasado se han alejado.“Se siente traicionado por algunos de los amigos que solían ser sus amigos”, dijo John Catsimatidis, el multimillonario político propietario de la emisora local que emite el programa de radio de Giuliani. “¿Te gustaría tener a esos amigos como amigos?”.Aunque Giuliani no parece incluir a Trump en esta categoría ―sigue adulando públicamente a un hombre al que le ha pedido ayuda económica―, su relación ha sufrido algunas tensiones. En su último fin de semana en el cargo, Trump criticó a Giuliani en una reunión privada, según una persona informada al respecto.El mes pasado, el club de Trump en Bedminster, Nueva Jersey, fue el lugar de una recaudación de fondos para la defensa legal de Giuliani.Pero días después, en el aniversario del 11 de septiembre, Trump no dijo una sola palabra en público sobre el neoyorquino más asociado con la tragedia.Giuliani centró sus objeciones en otro punto, al comentar sobre el sitio que se le había asignado entre los dignatarios en la ceremonia. “No nos ponen demasiado cerca a los que tuvimos algo que ver con el 11 de septiembre”, dijo.Al valorar su propio legado esa misma semana en su transmisión en directo, en la que se definió como el alcalde de Nueva York más exitoso de la historia, Giuliani aún parecía consumido por la posición que ocupa ahora en su ciudad.También sonaba resignado.“Esta torcida ciudad demócrata”, dijo, “nunca tendrá una placa para mí”.Olivia Bensimon More

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      Conservative Election Activists Use Virginia as a Dry Run for 2024

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      Inspired in part by Donald Trump’s baseless rigged-election claims, the activists are trying to recruit supporters to serve as poll watchers and election workers in the state’s legislative contests.In 2021, after Republican victories in Virginia, conservative activists were so proud of their work training poll watchers, recruiting election workers and making other attempts to subtly influence the voting system that they wrote a memo called “The Virginia Model.” The memo detailed ways that other states could follow Virginia’s lead in protecting so-called election integrity.Now these activists are turning their attention back to Virginia, which is a month away from tossup elections that will decide control of the state’s closely divided legislature and offer both national parties clear evidence of their electoral strengths and weaknesses heading into 2024.Every Tuesday night, Virginia Fair Elections, the group that drafted “The Virginia Model,” holds trainings for poll watchers aligned with its mission and encourages conservative activists to register to work at the polls. The organization also hosts trainings for new members of local election boards.The trainings are permeated by an undercurrent of mistrust in the electoral system: Poll watchers are encouraged to arrive early and insist on being as close as legally possible to election workers, voters and ballot machines; to make sure to inspect those machines; and to look for any evidence of potential fraud.“All of us have eyes on,” Clara Belle Wheeler, a former member of the Virginia State Board of Elections who now leads the trainings, said at the end of an hourlong training session for poll watchers last Tuesday, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. “I’m watching.”The group, like many others across the country, is taking its cues from former President Donald J. Trump, who has continued to make baseless claims that American elections are rigged. Behind the scenes and at public events, conservative activists who share his beliefs have been working to overhaul voting laws and recruit activists and supporters to serve as poll watchers and election workers.In numerous counties and localities across Virginia, conservative activists have been appointed to local election boards, the bodies that are in charge of determining early voting hours and locations, leading some to move early polling locations or reduce voting access on the weekends. The state also withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, an interstate clearinghouse for voter data that helps ensure secure elections, but became a flashpoint on the right based on a widely debunked conspiracy theory.Democrats and voting rights groups say these moves could have significant consequences — that seemingly small changes and pressures on the system could add up and potentially affect the outcome of an election. They worry that overly aggressive poll watchers could intimidate voters, or that conspiracy-minded Trump supporters who insert themselves in the election process could interfere with the results.“This is sort of like a death by 1,000 cuts, and there’s no necessarily one thing that you can point to and say, ‘That’s what’s going to swing the election,’” said Aaron Mukerjee, the voter protection director for the Virginia Democratic Party. “Taken together, the goal is to disenfranchise enough voters that they can win the election.”It is often difficult to determine whether changes to election laws or other attempts to intervene in the voting process ultimately affect outcomes. Turnout alone does not determine how many voters may have been affected. In the Trump era, changes in voting patterns have scrambled the longtime presumption that higher turnout helps Democrats and lower turnout aids Republicans.And there is no evidence that Republican election activists aided victories in Virginia in 2021, nor that their policies and activities necessarily benefit either party. During that election, poll watchers at 13 voting sites were observed being disruptive, according to reports filed by elections workers.In the run-up to the 2021 election, activists trained by Virginia Fair Elections collected claims of malfeasance and filed a lawsuit challenging at least 390 ballot applications that were missing Social Security numbers. The suit was dismissed, but conservative news outlets focused on the complaint and began to argue that the coming vote in Virginia would be “stolen,” as many activists believed had happened in 2020. (Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, ended up winning, and his party made gains in the legislature.)Nonetheless, Republican-aligned groups like Virginia Fair Elections continue to try to tighten voting laws.Virginia Fair Elections is managed by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that was formed in 1996 with moderate fund-raising in the low six figures annually. But as the think tank shifted its focus to so-called election integrity efforts after the last presidential contest, it raised over $508,000 in 2021, according to data kept by ProPublica.That money included a $125,000 grant earmarked for the “Virginia Fair Elections project” from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of groups that have proliferated myths about voter fraud. Its board includes Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer who played a key role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.In 2021, the “Virginia Model” executed by Virginia Fair Elections became the blueprint for the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition guided by Ms. Mitchell that quickly became one of the most influential organizations seeking to change voting laws and recruit local activists.Last year, Virginia Fair Elections hosted a two-day gathering conceptualized by Ms. Mitchell. The group boasted of having trained 4,500 poll watchers and election officials, and of covering 85 percent of polling locations in Virginia on Election Day in 2021 and during the 45 days of early voting.Cleta Mitchell has guided the Election Integrity Network, one of the most influential organizations seeking to change voting laws and recruit activists to serve as poll watchers and election workers.Matt Rourke/Associated PressIn August, Virginia Fair Elections held a similar meeting at a Sheraton hotel outside Richmond. The daylong event featured 12 discussions, including a keynote speech from Mollie Hemingway, a well-known conservative columnist. A panel discussion held just after lunch highlighted one front in which the network has made significant gains: county election boards and registrars, who serve as the chief election officials in Virginia localities.“The most important thing we do, however, is the hiring, and sometimes the firing, of the general registrar, and I think just as critical, if not more so, is the appointment, the training and potentially the dismissal of election officers,” John Ambrose, a Republican who serves as the vice chair of the electoral board of Richmond, told the audience to loud applause, according to an audio recording of the panel obtained by Documented, a liberal investigative group, and shared with The Times.Ms. Wheeler and the president of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy did not respond to text messages seeking comment. Virginia Fair Elections did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Under a peculiarity of Virginia law, the party of the most recently elected governor holds the advantage in the partisan makeup of local election boards. After Mr. Youngkin won the governor’s office in 2021, boards across the state flipped to 2-to-1 Republican control from 2-to-1 Democratic control.Groups like Virginia Fair Elections worked to place people they had trained on local election boards across the state, which meant that in many places, conservative priorities became policy.At least 10 counties in Virginia, including at least four with predominantly Black populations, have canceled Sunday voting for the coming elections. Some of the 10 counties, among them Richmond, Spotsylvania, Virginia Beach and Chesterfield, contain major population centers.Sundays are popular voting days for Black communities, where “Souls to the Polls” events led by churches have a long history of fostering community and helping protect against intimidation at the polls.“Democracy is coming under attack, whether it’s the Republican-led electoral boards throughout different localities who are cutting down on Sunday voting, or even closing early-vote locations that were in predominately Black communities,” said Joshua Cole, a pastor and a Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates in the Fredericksburg area. He pointed to the Mattaponi Baptist Association of Virginia, a local association of Black churches, several of which are no longer able to hold Souls to the Polls events.“Don’t take that right away from Christians, especially African American Christians, when it’s been a staple in the community for years,” he said.Joshua Cole, a Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates, has been critical of the push for counties to cancel Sunday voting, which are traditionally popular voting days for Black communities. Ryan M. Kelly/Associated PressSome local election officials acknowledged that the shift in partisan control was the main cause for the changes.“The reason Sunday voting is no longer an option for the City of Richmond is because the political representation from our electoral board has changed from Democratic to Republican since 2021,” said Katherin Cardozo-Robledo, the executive assistant to the electoral board in Richmond, a city whose population of about 230,000 is roughly 45 percent Black.Others, however, said there simply wasn’t enough demand.“We have elections every November in Virginia, so we did not continue it last year, either,” said Mary Lynn A. Pinkerman, who oversees elections in Chesapeake, which is roughly 30 percent Black. “Our city has approximately 176,000 voters, and when we tried it after being told there would be busloads coming, we only had 170 voters come that day. We do not have enough of a demand for it in our city.”With just a month left before polls close in Virginia, both parties are focused on the legislative elections, but the conservative activists have larger goals in mind.“What we’re doing is so critical,” Sheryl Stanworth, an attendee at the Tuesday training, said during the gathering. “We’ve got a presidential election to be looking forward to.” More

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

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