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    Revealed: the US adviser who tried to swing Nigeria’s 2015 election

    Revealed: the US adviser who tried to swing Nigeria’s 2015 electionSam Patten, an American consultant later mired in controversy, exploited emails obtained by Tal Hanan’s team In late December 2014, a team from Cambridge Analytica flew to Madrid for meetings with a handful of old and new contacts. A member of the former Libyan royal family referred to as “His Royal Highness” was there. So, too, was the son of a US billionaire, a Nigerian businessman and a private Israeli intelligence operative.For Alexander Nix, the Etonian chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, and his new employee Brittany Kaiser, who networked like most other people breathed, there may have been nothing unusual about such a gathering.But, by any other measure, it was an unlikely ensemble, not least because last week the identity of the intelligence operative was revealed to be Tal Hanan: an Israeli “black ops” mercenary who, it is now known, claims to have manipulated elections around the world.Hanan, who operates using the alias “Jorge”, has boasted of meddling in more than 30 elections. His connection to the now defunct Cambridge Analytica offers a revealing insight into what appears to have been a decades-long global election subversion industry.Hanan’s group, “Team Jorge”, was unmasked by an international consortium of media, including the Guardian and Observer, which revealed the hacking and disinformation tactics it uses to try to sway elections.Quick GuideAbout this investigative seriesShowThe Guardian and Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, is exposing how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay. The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. Hours before she was murdered, Lankesh had been putting the finishing touches on an article called In the Age of False News, which examined how so-called lie factories online were spreading disinformation in India. In the final line of the article, which was published after her death, Lankesh wrote: “I want to salute all those who expose fake news. I wish there were more of them.”The Story killers consortium includes more than 100 journalists from 30 media outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde, Radio France, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, TheMarker and the OCCRP. Read more about this project.Investigative journalism like this is vital for our democracy. Please consider supporting it today.Three reporters in Israel went undercover, pretending to be consultants trying to delay an election in a politically unstable African country. They secretly filmed more than six hours of Team Jorge’s pitches, including a live demonstration by Hanan showing how he could use hacking techniques to access the Telegram and Gmail accounts of senior political figures in Kenya. Hanan did not respond to detailed requests for comment but said: “To be clear, I deny any wrongdoing.”Previously unpublished emails leaked to the Observer and Guardian proved that Hanan had interfered in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election, in an attempt to bolster the electoral prospects of then incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan – and discredit Muhammadu Buhari, his main rival. And he did it in coordination with Cambridge Analytica.There is no suggestion that Jonathan knew of either Cambridge Analytica or Team Jorge’s ultimately failed attempts to get him re-elected. And the campaign had nothing to do with the hack of Facebook data that propelled the company into the headlines in 2018.Instead, its most salient feature was a classic dirty tricks campaign. Team Jorge obtained documents from inside the opposition campaign of Buhari that could later be leaked to the media. Cambridge Analytica did the leaking.That episode has been drawn sharply into focus in recent days. But one name so far not mentioned has been that of Sam Patten, the consultant who managed Cambridge Analytica’s campaign on the ground in Nigeria. Three years later, Patten would come to be known as a cooperating witness in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.A former state department official, Patten was ultimately charged and pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent to a Ukrainian oligarch. And among a memorable cast of characters who wound up as part of Mueller’s investigation, Patten’s business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, stood out: he was a Russian spy.A spy who allegedly passed polling data – processed by Cambridge Analytica – from the Trump campaign to Russian intelligence in 2016 and planted false narratives about Ukraine in the 2020 election. Kilimnik was later subjected to sanctions by the US Treasury, which described him as a “known Russian intelligence services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf”. He has denied that he worked for Russian intelligence.A campaign so dirty it panicked staffClose readers of the Observer may fuzzily recall some elements of this story from our coverage of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. In the news frenzy that followed the Observer and New York Times revelations about the illicit (and now known to be illegal) heist of millions of people’s Facebook data, one story got lost in the mix.Four days after the original report in the Observer, we published a series of follow-up stories in the Guardian about a campaign so dirty that, even at the time, employees worried that they were implicated in illegal activity. This was the Nigeria campaign that resurfaced this week, with the unmasking of Hanan finally solving the mystery of the identity of the “Israeli consultants” referenced in the story.In 2018, some employees knew Hanan as “Jorge” but his true identity was unknown. Kaiser, grilled by MPs in parliament, said she could not “recall” his name, and she did not know about his activities until after the event.Emails leaked to the Guardian and Observer reveal when Nix asked her the real name of “Jorge” from “the Israel black ops co” in May 2015, she replied: “Tal Hanan is CEO of Demoman International.”Kaiser told the Observer that her parliamentary testimony had been a “daunting experience”, adding: “I didn’t remember the name of the Demoman company when asked.” She said she had no prior knowledge of the methods Team Jorge would end up using in Nigeria, and downplayed her role in the campaign.Observer front pagesCambridge Analytica and Team Jorge were, she said, working “separately but in parallel” for the same client – the Nigerian businessman both sides had met during the gathering in Madrid. “Alexander flew in for this one to pitch the Nigerians and separately so did Jorge,” Kaiser recalled.After the Madrid meeting, Kaiser said, she was not involved in any “operational matters with Jorge” in relation to the Nigeria campaign, which was led by a team on the ground. “I sent some emails to put everyone in contact with each other and sort out who was doing what as time was short,” she added.The emails suggest that Patten would, as part of his role at Cambridge Analytica, take responsibility for exploiting the material that Hanan obtained from the Nigerian opposition. Despite anxiety over the material, which panicked staff had assumed had been “hacked”, someone at Cambridge Analytica combed through the documents, looking for dirt on the opposition candidates.And it was Patten who appears to have leaked select documents to BuzzFeed and the Washington Free Beacon.‘Ghost’ campaign in NigeriaIn January 2015, Patten found himself parachuted into Abuja, Nigeria, to lead a last-minute $1.8m “ghost” campaign for SCL (Cambridge Analytica) in support of President Jonathan and against Buhari. Kaiser had helped land the contract in her first weeks with the company.In her memoir, Targeted, she writes that it was her friend, a former Libyan prince, who introduced her to “wealthy Nigerian oil industry billionaires” who wanted a last-minute anonymous campaign to help get Jonathan re-elected.Emails obtained by the Observer show that Kaiser’s travel schedule in December 2014, when she was helping seal the contract, was a whirlwind of meetings across three continents with highly placed contacts and a complicated web of different, though often overlapping, projects.One was the last-minute attempt to affect the outcome of the west African election. While the wealthy Nigerian client hired Cambridge Analytica and Team Jorge on separate contracts, the expectation was that both sides would coordinate.Within a fortnight of the Madrid meeting, Patten flew into Abuja. He is understood to have coordinated with others in the country against Buhari – among them Hanan, who sources say he met in a hotel in Abuja. Another Team Jorge operative working in Nigeria did so under the alias “Joel”.Hanan claimed in emails that they had entered the country on a “special visa”. A highly placed source told the Observer in 2017 that the Israeli contractors travelled on Ukrainian passports and that their fee for work in Nigeria – $500,000 – was transmitted via Switzerland into a Ukrainian bank account.A busy time for Sam PattenIn press reports, Patten has said he was not involved in Cambridge Analytica’s controversial data-targeting practices. The work he performed for the now defunct firm, he told New York magazine in 2019, was more “standard”, described as analysis, speechwriting, ads and “attempts to sway the media”.But the consortium’s investigation and previous reporting by the Observer suggest a different story. It was a busy time for Patten, whose work in Nigeria took place days before he founded a new company – Begemot Ventures – with Konstantin Kilimnik, the Ukrainian-born political consultant alleged to be a Russian intelligence agent by the US government.According to the emails, Patten flew to London at the end of January. That was where, according to the subject line of one email, a “final sweep” of the material that Team Jorge had obtained using deceptive measures was undertaken. There is no evidence that Patten knew about the nefarious methods through which that material had been obtained by the IsraelisBut others at the firm were alarmed. Cambridge Analytica employees who worked in the company’s office in Mayfair, central London, told the Observer in 2018 how they had been given a thumb drive by two Israeli operatives, one of whom is now known to be Hanan. Employees described their panic when they realised they were looking at private emails that they assumed had been illegally hacked, with one said to have “freaked out”.Do you have information about Tal Hanan or ‘Team Jorge’? For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.Kaiser told parliament that episode was “concerning”. But she said she did not believe the emails had been “hacked” in the classic sense, via computer, but by a person hired by the Israeli team to physically infiltrate the Buhari campaign and illicitly download them there.Whatever the case, it was Cambridge Analytica’s job to search for dirt. We “continue to analyse the information that we received from Jorge to see if there is anything that would ignite the international press”, an employee told a representative of the client. “If we find something, then we will push it.”Patten, it would appear, was focused on exactly that. The problem was that the data dump was disappointing. Referring to “the matter that brought us back to London”, Patten asked colleagues: “Did anyone come up with anything that could be of interest? My overall read is that, while a good insight into campaign thinking, there are few silver bullets or smoking guns.”He added that he would “use the AKPD bits”. That was a reference to emails revealing that AKPD Message and Media, the political consultancy founded by David Axelrod, a former chief strategist to Barack Obama, had briefly been hired by the Buhari campaign.“What are our media pitch angles?” Patten asked the next day, in an email enumerating three points, including that “B’s [Buhari’s] actual positions are obscured by a slick ‘change’ campaign steered by well-heeled American consultants”.Hours later, he sent another email: “Boom. Story 1 in progress, background sources needed, off the record, who other than me can do?” He then sent another email to clarify that he needed someone on the team to speak to a journalist to tell them Buhari, the leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was “running a tight, American-style campaign with discipline and a scripted message”.Five days later, an article appeared in BuzzFeed headlined “Firm founded by David Axelrod worked in Nigerian election as recently as December”. It referenced “emails between top APC officials obtained by BuzzFeed News”, which echoed Patten’s talking points.On the same day, another article appeared in the Washington Free Beacon that also referenced the leaked emails. It cited “a series of emails” obtained by the conservative news website “between senior APC party members and advisers”.BuzzFeed declined to comment. The Washington Free Beacon did not respond to a request for comment. When reached by phone, Patten said he had no recollection of a man named Tal Hanan or Jorge, and was “not involved” in anything having to do with the “Israeli hackers” who were previously the subject of media attention.When asked whether he had ever contacted reporters to discuss AKPD working for Buhari, he paused. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said, before ending the conversation. He did not respond to further requests for comment. Nix did not respond to questions, other than to say this newspaper’s “purported understanding is disputed”.TopicsCambridge AnalyticaDisinfo black opsEspionageNigeriaGoodluck JonathanMuhammadu BuhariAfricaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Tesla recalls 362,000 vehicles over self-driving software flaws that risk crashes

    Tesla recalls 362,000 vehicles over self-driving software flaws that risk crashesRegulators say driver assistance system does not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws and can cause crashes Tesla said it would recall 362,000 US vehicles to update its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta software after regulators said on Thursday the driver assistance system did not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws and could cause crashes.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the Tesla software allows a vehicle to “exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash”.Tesla will release an over-the-air (OTA) software update free of charge, and the electric vehicle maker said is not aware of any injuries or deaths that may be related to the recall issue. The automaker said it had 18 warranty claims.Tesla shares were down 1.6% at $210.76 on Thursday afternoon.The recall covers 2016-2023 Model S, Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles equipped with FSD Beta software or pending installation.NHTSA asked Tesla to recall the vehicles, but the company said despite the recall it did not concur in NHTSA’s analysis. The move is a rare intervention by federal regulators in a real-world testing program that the company sees as crucial to the development of cars that can drive themselves. FSD Beta is used by hundreds of thousands of Tesla customers.The setback for Tesla’s automated driving effort comes about two weeks before the company’s March 1 investor day, during which Chief Executive Elon Musk is expected to promote the EV maker’s artificial intelligence capability and plans to expand its vehicle lineup.Tesla could not immediately be reached for comment.NHTSA has an ongoing investigation it opened in 2021 into 830,000 Tesla vehicles with driver assistance system Autopilot over a string of crashes with parked emergency vehicles. NHTSA is reviewing whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure drivers are paying attention. NHTSA said on Thursday despite the FSD recall its “investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot and associated vehicle systems remains open and active.”Tesla said in “certain rare circumstances … the feature could potentially infringe upon local traffic laws or customs while executing certain driving maneuvers”.Possible situations where the problem could occur include traveling or turning through certain intersections during a yellow traffic light and making a lane change out of certain turn-only lanes to continue traveling straight, NHTSA said.NHTSA said “the system may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver’s adjustment of the vehicle’s speed to exceed posted speed limits.”Last year, Tesla recalled nearly 54,000 US vehicles with FSD Beta software that may allow some models to conduct “rolling stops” and not come to a complete stop at some intersections, posing a safety risk, NHTSA said.Tesla and NHTSA say FSD’s advanced driving features do not make the cars autonomous and require drivers to pay attention.TopicsTeslaElon MuskUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Breakfast with Chad: Posthumanism

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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    Why Donald Trump’s return to Facebook could mark a rocky new age for online discourse

    Why Donald Trump’s return to Facebook could mark a rocky new age for online discourseThe former president was banned from Instagram and Facebook following the Jan 6 attacks, but Meta argues that new ‘guardrails’ will keep his behaviour in check. Plus: is a chatbot coming for your job?

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    It’s been two years since Donald Trump was banned from Meta, but now he’s back. The company’s justification for allowing the former president to return to Facebook and Instagram – that the threat has subsided – seems to ignore that in the two years since the ban Trump hasn’t changed, it’s just that his reach has reduced.Last week, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, announced that soon Trump will be able to post on Instagram and Facebook. The company said “the risk has sufficiently receded” in the two years since the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021 to allow the ban to be lifted.What you might not have been aware of – except through media reports – was Trump’s response. That is because the former US president posted it on Truth Social, his own social media network that he retreated to after he was banned from the others. And it is effectively behind a wall for web users, because the company is not accepting new registrations. On that platform, Trump is said to have fewer than 5 million followers, compared to 34 million and almost 88 million he’d had on Facebook and Twitter respectively.Meta’s ban meant that Trump wouldn’t have space on its platforms during the US midterms elections in 2022, but would anything have been different if Trump had been given a larger audience? As Dan Milmo has detailed, almost half of the posts on Trump’s Truth Social account in the weeks after the midterms pushed election fraud claims or amplified QAnon accounts or content. But you wouldn’t know it unless you were on that platform, or reading a news report about it like this one.If given a larger audience, will Trump resume his Main Character role in online discourse (a role that Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, has gamely taken on in the past few months)? Or has his influence diminished? This is the gamble Meta is taking.When Musk lifted Trump’s ban on Twitter in November after a user poll won by a slim margin, it was easy to read the former president’s snub of the gesture as a burn on the tech CEO. But it seems increasingly likely that the Meta decision about whether to reinstate him was looming large in Trump’s mind. Earlier this month, NBC reported that Trump’s advisors had sent a letter to Meta pleading for the ban to be lifted, saying it “dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse”. If Trump had gone back to Twitter and started reposting what he had posted on Truth Social, there would have been more pressure on Meta to keep the ban in place (leaving aside the agreement Trump has with his own social media company that keeps his posts exclusive on Truth Social for several hours).Twitter lifting the ban and Trump not tweeting at all gave Meta sufficient cover.The financialsThere’s also the possible financial reasoning. Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, said Facebook is “a dying platform” and restoring Trump is about clinging to relevance and revenue.For months, Trump has been posting on Truth Social about how poorly Meta is performing financially, and in part trying to link it to him no longer being on Facebook. Meta has lost more than US$80bn in market value, and last year sacked thousands of workers as the company aimed to stem a declining user base and loss of revenue after Apple made privacy changes on its software (£).But what of the ‘guardrails’?Meta’s justification for restoring Trump’s account is that there are new “guardrails” that could result in him being banned again for the most egregious policy breaches for between one month and two years. But that is likely only going to be for the most serious of breaches – such as glorifying those committing violence. Clegg indicated that if Trump is posting QAnon-adjacent content, for example, his reach will be limited on those posts.The ban itself was a pretty sufficient reach limiter, but we will have to see what happens if Trump starts posting again. The unpublished draft document from staff on the January 6 committee, reported by the Washington Post last week, was pretty telling about Meta, and social media companies generally. It states that both Facebook and Twitter, under its former management, were sensitive to claims that conservative political speech was being suppressed. “Fear of reprisal and accusations of censorship from the political right compromised policy, process, and decision-making. This was especially true at Facebook,” the document states.“In one instance, senior leadership intervened personally to prevent rightwing publishers from having their content demoted after receiving too many strikes from independent fact-checkers.“After the election, they debated whether they should change their fact-checking policy on former world leaders to accommodate President Trump.”Those “guardrails” don’t seem particularly reassuring, do they?Is AI really coming for your job?Layoffs continue to hit media and companies are looking to cut costs. So it was disheartening for new reporters in particular to learn that BuzzFeed plans to use AI such as ChatGPT “to create content instead of writers”.(Full disclosure: I worked at BuzzFeed News prior to joining the Guardian in 2019, but it’s been long enough that I am not familiar with any of its thinking about AI.)But perhaps it’s a bit too early to despair. Anyone who has used free AI to produce writing will know it’s OK but not great, so the concern about BuzzFeed dipping its toes in those waters seems to be overstated – at least for now.In an interview with Semafor, BuzzFeed tech reporter Katie Notopoulos explained that the tools aren’t intended to replace the quiz-creation work writers do now, but to create new quizzes unlike what is already around. “On the one hand,” she said, “I want to try to explain this isn’t an evil plan to replace me with AI. But on the other … maybe let Wall Street believe that for a little while.”That seems to be where AI is now: not a replacement for a skilled person, just a tool.The wider TechScape
    This is the first really good in-depth look at the last few months of Twitter since Elon Musk took over.
    Social media users are posting feelgood footage of strangers to build a following, but not every subject appreciates the clickbaity attention of these so-called #kindness videos.
    If you’re an influencer in Australia and you’re not declaring your sponcon properly, you might be targeted as part of a review by the local regulator.
    Speaking of influencers, Time has a good explanation for why you might have seen people posting about mascara on TikTok in the past few days.
    Writer Jason Okundaye makes the case that it’s time for people to stop filming strangers in public and uploading the videos online in the hope of going viral.
    Nintendo rereleasing GoldenEye007 this week is a reminder of how much the N64 game shaped video games back in the day.
    TopicsTechnologyTechScapeSocial mediaDonald TrumpDigital mediaMetaFacebookInstagramnewslettersReuse this content More

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    TikTok CEO to testify before US Congress next month over data privacy

    TikTok CEO to testify before US Congress next month over data privacyShou Zi Chew will face legislators amid concerns over the social media app’s alleged collusion with Beijing in accessing user data As the US legislative battle over TikTok continues to escalate, Shou Zi Chew, the chief executive of the video-sharing app, will make his first appearance before Congress to testify next month. Chew will testify before the House energy and commerce committee on 23 March, Republican representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers confirmed in a statement on Monday, as scrutiny of the Chinese-owned app over data privacy concerns grows.TechScape: Is ‘banning’ TikTok protecting users or censorship? It depends who you askRead moreThe news comes after the app was banned on government devices and school campuses in a number of states in recent months, as well as on federal devices after a ban was passed in Congress in December. Next month the House foreign affairs committee plans to hold a vote on a bill aimed at blocking the use of TikTok entirely in the US.“ByteDance-owned TikTok has knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist party to access American user data,” McMorris Rodgers said, adding that Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security.TikTok has denied these claims, stating: “The Chinese Communist party has neither direct nor indirect control of ByteDance or TikTok,” according to a company spokesman. It confirmed on Monday that Chew will testify.“We welcome the opportunity to set the record straight about TikTok, ByteDance and the commitments we are making to address concerns about US national security before the House committee on energy and commerce,” the spokesman said, adding the company hopes “by sharing details of our comprehensive plans with the full committee, Congress can take a more deliberative approach to the issues at hand”.McMorris Rodgers and other Republican lawmakers have demanded more information from TikTok regarding the app’s impact on young people, concerns about harmful content and details on potential sexual exploitation of minors on the platform.TikTok was first targeted in earnest by the Trump administration in 2020, with a sweeping executive order prohibiting US companies from doing business with ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. In the three years since, the company has sought to assure Washington that the personal data of US citizens cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China’s Communist party or anyone else under Beijing’s influence.While Biden revoked the Trump administration ban in June 2021, the reversal was made with a stipulation that the US committee on foreign investment (CFIUS) conduct a security review of the platform and suggested a path forward to avoid a permanent ban.That review has been ongoing as the CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks for more than two years aiming to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of US TikTok users. The White House on Friday declined to comment on whether it would support a legislative ban on TikTok or the status of the talks.Reuters contributed to this articleTopicsTikTokUS CongressSocial mediaDigital mediaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Biden vows to veto Republican plans that threaten economic ‘chaos’ – as it happened

    “They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that,” Biden said, referring to fiscal policies proposed by Republicans.“Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.“I will veto everything they send,” he added.It’s slightly past 4pm in Washington DC. Here’s where things stand:
    Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao has spoken out against former president Donald Trump who has repeatedly issued racist remarks towards her. Chao, who is Asian American, told Politico, “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name…He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans,” she added.
    In an address in Springfield, Virginia on Thursday, president Joe Biden hit back against Republican fiscal policies and vowed to not let a national debt default happen. “They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that…Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.
    Biden also reaffirmed his administration’s fight against global warming by “finally making sure the biggest corporations just begin to pay a little bit. The days are over where corporations pay zero in federal taxes.”
    San Francisco superior court judge Stephen Murphy has ordered footage of the attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be released. In addition to home surveillance footage, Murphy ordered the public release of police body camera footage, 911 audio calls, as well as audio from police interviews with David DePape, the suspect who broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home last October in attempts to kidnap the former speaker.
    Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for a change in leadership of the Republican National Committee in an interview on Thursday morning. “I think we need a change, and I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC outside of DC – why would you want to have your headquarters in the most Democrat city in America?,” DeSantis said on the Charlie Kirk Show, referring to the lawyer who is currently the foremost challenger of RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s position.
    The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents check to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records. The request comes amid the ongoing but increasingly surreal scandal tangling up Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence.
    Hard right congresswoman and conspiracy-booster Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, has “no chance” of being stated-2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vice presidential choice, despite aspiring to it, a source tells Guardian US.
    Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s owner, is reportedly ready to allow Trump to post on the platforms his ongoing attacks on the results of the 2020 presidential election, where he lost to Joe Biden but claims he really won. But if Trump posts misinformation about upcoming elections, including the 2024 presidential, it will take some unspecified action to restrict his messaging. Meta has reinstated Trump to the platforms after a two-year ban, but he hasn’t posted yet.
    The decision to allow Trump back onto Facebook and Instagram is infuriating many, including some civil rights groups (though not the ACLU) and Democratic politicians. The move has been called dangerous by some.
    That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up today’s US politics blog. Thank you for following along. We’ll be back on Friday. Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao has spoken out against former president Donald Trump who has repeatedly issued racist remarks towards her. Chao, who is Asian American, told Politico, “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name… Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation.”“He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans,” she added. Earlier this week, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden’s Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown?” he wrote. “Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China,” he added. Trump has also previously referred to Chao, who is married to Mitch McConnell, as “China’s loving wife.”“We have more work to do but we’re on the right track… I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today…and nothing is beyond our capacity if we work together,” said Biden in his closing remarks. “Unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 50 years,” said Biden since taking office two years ago. “We created nearly 11 million jobs, including 750,000 manufacturing jobs…the unemployment rate is near record lowest for Black and Hispanic workers and the lowest ever recorded for people with disabilities,” he added.“If you don’t think we have a climate crisis, come travel with me around the country,” says Biden, adding, “We have enormous drought, now we have these super storms in the west…folks, there is a thing called global warming and it’s real but we can do something about it.”“Families are going to save more than $1,000 on tax credits on these [energy efficient] vehicles when they purchase one, and energy efficient appliances like refrigerators and washing machines…and we’re paying for all of this by finally making sure the biggest corporations just begin to pay a little bit. The days are over where corporations pay zero in federal taxes,” he added. “They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that,” Biden said, referring to fiscal policies proposed by Republicans.“Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.“I will veto everything they send,” he added.“We’re moving in the right direction, now we have to protect those gains…from the MAGA Republicans… This ain’t your father’s Republican party… They want to pass legislation to do the following things…they want to raise your gas prices…cut taxes of your billionaires…and they want to impose a 30% national sales tax on food…clothing…house, cars… They want to eliminate the income tax system,” Biden said. “We’ve achieved a lot…economic growth is up, stronger than experts expected…jobs are the highest in American history and wages are up. In the past six months, inflation has gone down each month,” Biden said in his address at Springfield, Virginia. San Francisco superior court judge Stephen Murphy has ordered footage of the attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be released. In addition to home surveillance footage, Murphy ordered the public release of police body camera footage, 911 audio calls, as well as audio from police interviews with David DePape, the suspect who broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home last October in attempts to kidnap the former speaker.Unable to find Nancy Pelosi, the alleged perpetrator instead beat her 82-year old husband with a hammer. Murphy’s decision comes amid calls from numerous news agencies that seek the release of the footage and evidence. “You don’t eliminate the public right of access just because of concerns about conspiracy theories,” said Thomas Burke, a lawyer who represented the Associated Press and other media organizations in their attempt to gain access to the footage, the AP reports. Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for a change in leadership of the Republican National Committee in an interview on Thursday morning. .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I think we need a change, and I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC outside of DC – why would you want to have your headquarters in the most Democrat city in America?,” DeSantis said on the Charlie Kirk Show, referring to the lawyer who is currently the foremost challenger of RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s position. He added: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“We’ve had three substandard election cycles in a row – ’18, ’20, and ’22 – and I would say of all three of those, ’22 was probably the worst given the political environment of a very unpopular President in Biden.”DeSantis’s comments come amid growing concerns from some RNC members that McDaniel has not done enough to push back against Donald Trump from forming a third political party if he does not secure the Republican presidential nomination during the next election cycle. Hello again, US politics live blog readers. It’s been a lively day in the news from Washington so far and there’ll be more to come. Joe Biden is due to leave the White House shortly en route to a union office in Springfield, Virginia, where he’s scheduled to give a speech at 2.45pm ET on the economy (and what he sees as Republican plans to block his economic agenda).Here’s where things stand:
    The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents check to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records, amid the ongoing but increasingly surreal scandal tangling up Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence.
    Hard right congresswoman and conspiracy-booster Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, has “no chance” of being stated-2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vice presidential choice, despite aspiring to it, a source tells Guardian US.
    Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s owner, is reportedly ready to allow Trump to post on the platforms his ongoing attacks on the results of the 2020 presidential election, where he lost to Joe Biden but claims he really won. But if Trump posts misinformation about upcoming elections, including the 2024 presidential, it will take some unspecified action to restrict his messaging. Meta has reinstated Trump to the platforms after a two-year ban, but he hasn’t posted yet.
    The decision to allow Trump back onto Facebook and Instagram is infuriating many, including some civil rights groups (though not the ACLU) and Democratic politicians. The move has been called dangerous by some.
    At a press briefing with the US attorney general Merrick Garland earlier, FBI director Christopher Wray warned, amid the scandal of classified documents turning up in the possession of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that people with access to such material should be more “conscious of the rules.”“Obviously I can’t comment on any specific investigation, but we have had, for quite a number of years, any number of mishandling investigations,” Wray told reporters at the briefing that was chiefly called to talk about the Department of Justice seizing a website used by a ransomware outfit.“That is, unfortunately, a regular part of our counterintelligence division, counterintelligence programs work,” Wray added. “And people need to be conscious of the rules for classified information and appropriate handling of it. Those rules are there for a reason,” Wray said.Today FBI Director Christopher Wray weighed in on the classified doc drama, I believe for the first time, saying in part, “people need to be conscious of the rules regarding classified information and appropriate, handling of them…those rules are there for a reason.”— Evan Lambert (@EvanLambertTV) January 26, 2023
    It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at this point. But, again, there is a vast difference between what appears to be a careless oversight by Joe Biden, followed by an infuriating and outrageous information blackout before the public were told, and the case of Trump, who refused to hand over boxes of classified and secret documents to the government after leaving the White House and had to be raided by the FBI last summer.The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents do a sweep or a re-sweep, if they’ve checked before, to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records among their personal records, amid the rumbling scandal, CNN reports. The call comes as Donald Trump is being investigated by a special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) for withholding many boxes of material, including top secret documents, Joe Biden is being investigated by a separate special counsel after it was discovered that there were a few classified documents outstanding from his time as vice president, which he’s handed over, and that Mike Pence had some documents, too.The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent federal agency within the executive branch. The agency sent a letter today to representatives of former presidents and vice presidents from, according to CNN, the last six administrations covered by the Presidential Records Act (PRA).“The letter, which was reviewed by CNN, requests that they check their files to ensure that material thought to be personal does not “inadvertently” contain presidential records that are required by law to be turned over to the Archives,” the cable news channel reports.The report continues: “The Archives sent the letter to representatives for former Presidents Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and former Vice Presidents Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Dan Quayle.Representatives for the four former presidents have all so far told CNN they do not have any classified records in their possession.”Here again, FYI, is the Guardian’s great explainer on the fundamental differences between the Trump and Biden cases.Obama, Dubya, Clinton, Cheney, Gore, Quayle (and president Jimmy Carter, aged 98, who hasn’t been mentioned in this latest sweep), are still alive.NBC News made a splash on Wednesday with a report that said Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to be Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president in 2024.Greene, from Georgia, is a far-right controversialist and conspiracy theorist who was barred from House committees by Democrats but is now suddenly strongly allied with Republican leaders, after supporting Kevin McCarthy through his 15-vote ordeal to be elected speaker.Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist, now a far-right media figure (and accused fraudster), told NBC Greene saw herself “on the short list for Trump’s VP”.An unnamed source “who has advised Greene said her ‘whole vision is to be vice president’.”So the Guardian asked its own anonymous source, a veteran Trumpworld insider, if there was any chance Trump would pick Greene.The source said: “No chance. She might want it but it’s not real.”So there’s that.There’s also this, an interview with Robert Draper of the New York Times about his fascinating book about Republican dysfunction and, in particular, the rise of Marjorie Taylor Greene:‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 Read moreThe Guardian’s David Smith earlier this month ran through some of Trump’s options in the veepstakes, including Taylor Greene. You can read it here. More

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    Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban to be lifted, Meta announces

    Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban to be lifted, Meta announcesEx-president to be allowed back ‘in coming weeks … with new guardrails in place’ after ban that followed January 6 attack In a highly anticipated decision, Meta has said it will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram following a two-year ban from the platforms over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection.Meta will allow Trump to return “in coming weeks” but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses”, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a blogpost explaining the decision.Two more papers found in Trump’s storage last year were marked secretRead more“Like any other Facebook or Instagram user, Mr Trump is subject to our community standards,” Clegg wrote.“In the event that Mr Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation.”Trump was removed from Meta platforms following the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021, during which he posted unsubstantiated claims that the election had been stolen, praised increasingly violent protestors and condemned former vice-president Mike Pence even as the mob threatened his life.Clegg said the suspension was “an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances” and that Meta has weighed “whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is justified”.Ultimately, the company has decided that its platforms should be available for “open, public and democratic debate” and that users “should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again”, he wrote.“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying – the good, the bad and the ugly – so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” he said.As a general rule, we don’t want to get in the way of open debate on our platforms, esp in context of democratic elections. People should be able to hear what politicians are saying – good, bad & ugly – to make informed choices at the ballot box. 1/4— Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) January 25, 2023
    While it is unclear if the former president will begin posting again on the platform, his campaign indicated he had a desire to return in a letter sent to Meta in January.“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” the letter said.Safety concerns and a politicized debateThe move is likely to influence how other social media companies will handle the thorny balance of free speech and content moderation when it comes to world leaders and other newsworthy individuals, a debate made all the more urgent by Trump’s run for the US presidency once again.Online safety advocates have warned that Trump’s return will result in an increase of misinformation and real-life violence. Since being removed from Meta-owned platforms, the former president has continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories elsewhere, predominantly on his own network, Truth Social.While widely expected, it still drew sharp rebukes from civil rights advocates. “Facebook has policies but they under-enforce them,” said Laura Murphy, an attorney who led a two-year long audit of Facebook concluding in 2020. “I worry about Facebook’s capacity to understand the real world harm that Trump poses: Facebook has been too slow to act.”The Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Free Press and other groups also expressed concern on Wednesday over Facebook’s ability to prevent any future attacks on the democratic process, with Trump still repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.“With the mass murders in Colorado or in Buffalo, you can see there is already a cauldron of extremism that is only intensified if Trump weighs in,” said Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of media watchdog Media Matters for America. “When Trump is given a platform, it ratchets up the temperature on a landscape that is already simmering – one that will put us on a path to increased violence.”After the 6 January riots, the former president was also banned from Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube. Some of those platforms have already allowed Trump to return. Twitter’s ban, while initially permanent, was later overruled by its new chief executive Elon Musk. YouTube has not shared a timeline on a decision to allow Trump to return. Trump remains banned from Snapchat. Meta, however, dragged out its ultimate decision. In 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained in a post Trump had been barred from the platforms for encouraging violence and that he would remain suspended until a peaceful transition of power could take place.While Zuckerberg did not initially offer a timeline on the ban, the company punted its decision about whether to remove him permanently to its oversight board: a group of appointed academics and former politicians meant to operate independently of Facebook’s corporate leadership. That group ruled in May 2021 that the penalties should not be “indeterminate”, but kicked the final ruling on Trump’s accounts back to Meta, suggesting it decide in six months – two years after the riots.The deadline was initially slated for 7 January, and reports from inside Meta suggested the company was intensely debating the decision. Clegg wrote in a 2021 blog post that Trump’s accounts would need to be strictly monitored in the event of his return.How the ‘guardrails’ could workAnnouncing the decision on Wednesday, Clegg said Meta’s “guardrails” would include taking action against content that does not directly violate their community standards but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon”.Meta “may limit the distribution of such posts, and for repeated instances, may temporarily restrict access to our advertising tools”, Clegg said, or “remove the re-share button” from posts.Trump pleads with Meta to restore Facebook accountRead moreTrump responded to the news with a short statement on Truth Social, reposted by others on Twitter, saying that “such a thing should never happen again to a sitting president” but did not indicate if or when he would return to the platform.It remains to be seen if he will actually begin posting again on the platforms where his accounts have been reinstated. While he initially suggested he would be “staying on Truth [Social]”, his own social media platform, recent reports said he was eager to return to Facebook, formally appealing Meta to reinstate his accounts. But weeks after returning to Twitter, Trump had yet to tweet again. Some have suggested the silence has been due to an exclusivity agreement he has with Truth Social.A report from Rolling Stone said Trump planned to begin tweeting again when the agreement, which requires him to post all news to the app six hours in advance of any other platform, expires in June. Trump has a far broader reach on mainstream social platforms compared to Truth Social, where he has just 5 million followers.Many online safety advocates have warned Trump’s return would be toxic, and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill urged Meta in a December letter to uphold the ban.Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat who previously chaired the House intelligence committee, criticized the decision to reinstate him.“Trump incited an insurrection,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous.”Trump’s account has remained online even after his ban, but he had been unable to publish new posts. Civil rights groups say that regardless of the former president’s future actions the Meta decision marks a dangerous precedent. “Whether he uses the platforms or not, a reinstatement by Meta sends a message that there are no real consequences even for inciting insurrection and a coup on their channels,” said a group of scholars, advocates and activists calling itself the Real Facebook Oversight Board in a statement. “Someone who has violated their terms of service repeatedly, spread disinformation on their platforms and fomented violence would be welcomed back.”Reuters contributed reportingTopicsDonald TrumpMetaFacebookInstagramUS politicsSocial networkingUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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    Justice department alleges Google tried to ‘eliminate’ ad market rivals in lawsuit

    Justice department alleges Google tried to ‘eliminate’ ad market rivals in lawsuitThe DoJ and eight states have filed a complaint against the tech company for violating antitrust laws The US justice department and eight states filed a lawsuit against Alphabet’s Google on Tuesday over allegations that the company abused its dominance of the digital advertising business, according to a court document.Google parent firm Alphabet to cut 12,000 jobs worldwideRead more“Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the government said in its antitrust complaint.The government alleges that Google’s plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralize or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products.The antitrust suit was filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Attorney general Merrick Garland said in a press conference Tuesday that Google’s dominance in the ad market means fewer publishers are able to offer their products without charging subscription or other fees, because they can’t rely on competition in the advertising market to keep ad prices low.As a result of Google’s dominance, he said, “website creators earn less and advertisers pay more”.The justice department asked the court to compel Google to divest its Google Ad manager suite, including its ad exchange AdX.The department’s suit accuses Google of unlawfully monopolizing the way ads are served online by excluding competitors. This includes its 2008 acquisition of DoubleClick, a dominant ad server, and subsequent rollout of technology that locks in the split-second bidding process for ads that get served on Web pages.Google’s ad manager lets large publishers who have significant direct sales manage their advertisements. The ad exchange, meanwhile, is a real-time marketplace to buy and sell online display ads.The lawsuit demands that Google break off three different businesses from its core business of search, YouTube and other products such as Gmail: the buying and selling of ads and ownership of the exchange where that business is transacted.Garland said that “for 15 years, Google has pursued a course of anti-competitive conduct” that has halted the rise of rival technologies and manipulated the mechanics of online ad auctions to force advertisers and publishers to use its tools.In so doing, he added, “Google has engaged in exclusionary conduct” that has “severely weakened”, if not destroyed competition in the ad tech industry.Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, said in a statement that the suit “doubles down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow”.The lawsuit is the second federal antitrust complaint filed against Google, alleging violations of antitrust law in how the company acquires or maintains its dominance. The justice department lawsuit filed against Google in 2020 focuses on its monopoly in search and is scheduled to go to trial in September.Eight states joined the department in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, including Google’s home state of California. The states taking part in the suit include California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee.Dina Srinivasan, a Yale University fellow and adtech expert, said the lawsuit is “huge” because it aligns the entire nation – state and federal governments – in a bipartisan legal offensive against Google.Google shares were down 1.3% on the news.While Google remains the market leader by a long shot, its share of the US digital ad revenue has been eroding, falling to 28.8% last year from 36.7% in 2016, according to Insider Intelligence. Google’s advertising business is responsible for about 80% of its revenue.TopicsGoogleAlphabetUS politicsAdvertisingnewsReuse this content More