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      How would a possible third indictment affect Trump’s 2024 run? – podcast

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      On Tuesday, Donald Trump said he had received a letter suggesting he was about to be indicted by special counsel Jack Smith in connection with the criminal investigation into the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021. It would be his third criminal indictment.
      Jonathan Freedland asks Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, if the pile of indictments could grow too large even for Trump – and his voters. Plus: who is Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia? If Republicans do decide Trump is too badly damaged, might they turn to him?

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      ‘An evolution in propaganda’: a digital expert on AI influence in elections

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      Every election presents an opportunity for disinformation to find its way into the public discourse. But as the 2024 US presidential race begins to take shape, the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) technology threatens to give propagandists powerful new tools to ply their trade.Generative AI models that are able to create unique content from simple prompts are already being deployed for political purposes, taking disinformation campaigns into strange new places. Campaigns have circulated fake images and audio targeting other candidates, including an AI-generated campaign ad attacking Joe Biden and deepfake videos mimicking real-life news footage.The Guardian spoke with Renée DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a university program that researches the abuses of information technology, about how the latest developments in AI influence campaigns and how society is catching up to a new, artificially created reality.Concern around AI and its potential for disinformation has been around for a while. What has changed that makes this threat more urgent?When people became aware of deepfakes – which usually refers to machine-generated video of an event that did not happen – a few years ago there was concern that adversarial actors would use these types of video to disrupt elections. Perhaps they would make video of a candidate, perhaps they would make video of some sort of disaster. But it didn’t really happen. The technology captured public attention, but it wasn’t very widely democratized. And so it didn’t primarily manifest in the political conversation, but instead in the realm of much more mundane but really individually harmful things, like revenge porn.There’s been two major developments in the last six months. First is the rise of ChatGPT, which is generated text. It became available to a mass market and people began to realize how easy it was to use these types of text-based tools. At the same time, text-to-still image tools became globally available. Today, anybody can use Stable Diffusion or Midjourney to create photorealistic images of things that don’t really exist in the world. The combination of these two things, in addition to the concerns that a lot of people feel around the 2024 elections, has really captured public attention once again.Why did the political use of deepfakes not materialize?The challenge with using video in a political environment is that you really have to nail the substance of the content. There are a lot of tells in video, a lot of ways in which you can determine whether it’s generated. On top of that, when a video is truly sensational, a lot of people look at it and factcheck it and respond to it. You might call it a natural immune response.Text and images, however, have the potential for higher actual impact in an election scenario because they can be more subtle and longer lasting. Elections require months of campaigning during which people formulate an opinion. It’s not something where you’re going to change the entire public mind with a video and have that be the most impactful communication of the election.How do you think large language models can change political propaganda?I want to caveat that describing what is tactically possible is not the same thing as me saying the sky is falling. I’m not a doomer about this technology. But I do think that we should understand generative AI in the context of what it makes possible. It increases the number of people who can create political propaganda or content. It decreases the cost to do it. That’s not to say necessarily that they will, and so I think we want to maintain that differentiation between this is the tactic that a new technology enables versus that this is going to swing an election.As far as the question of what’s possible, in terms of behaviors, you’ll see things like automation. You might remember back in 2015 there were all these fears about bots. You had a lot of people using automation to try to make their point of view look more popular – making it look like a whole lot of people think this thing, when in reality it’s six guys and their 5,000 bots. For a while Twitter wasn’t doing anything to stop that, but it was fairly easy to detect. A lot of the accounts would be saying the exact same thing at the exact same time, because it was expensive and time consuming to generate a unique message for each of your fake accounts. But with generative AI it is now effortless to generate highly personalized content and to automate its dissemination.And then finally, in terms of content, it’s really just that the messages are more credible and persuasive.That seems tied to another aspect you’ve written about, that the sheer amount of content that can be generated, including misleading or inaccurate content, has a muddying effect on information and trust.It’s the scale that makes it really different. People have always been able to create propaganda, and I think it’s very important to emphasize that. There is an entire industry of people whose job it is to create messages for campaigns and then figure out how to get them out into the world. We’ve just changed the speed and the scale and the cost to do that. It’s just an evolution in propaganda.When we think about what’s new and what’s different here, the same thing goes for images. When Photoshop emerged, the public at first was very uncomfortable with Photoshopped images, and gradually became more comfortable with it. The public acclimated to the idea that Photoshop existed and that not everything that you see with your eyes is a thing that necessarily is as it seems – the idea that the woman that you see on the magazine cover probably does not actually look like that. Where we’ve gone with generative AI is the fabrication of a complete unreality, where nothing about the image is what it seems but it looks photorealistic.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNow anybody can make it look like the pope is wearing Balenciaga.Exactly.In the US, it seems like meaningful federal regulation is pretty far away if it’s going to come at all. Absent of that, what are some of the sort of short-term ways to mitigate these risks?First is the education piece. There was a very large education component when deepfakes became popular – media covered them and people began to get the sense that we were entering a world in which a video might not be what it seems.But it’s unreasonable to expect every person engaging with somebody on a social media platform to figure out if the person they’re talking to is real. Platforms will have to take steps to more carefully identify if automation is in play.On the image front, social media platforms, as well as generative AI companies, are starting to come together to try and determine what kind of watermarking might be useful so that platforms and others can determine computationally whether an image is generated.Some companies, like OpenAI, have policies around generating misinformation or the use of ChatGPT for political ends. How effective do you see those policies being?It’s a question of access. For any technology, you can try to put guardrails on your proprietary version of that technology and you can argue you’ve made a values-based decision to not allow your products to generate particular types of content. On the flip side, though, there are models that are open source and anyone can go and get access to them. Some of the things that are being done with some of the open source models and image generation are deeply harmful, but once the model is open sourced, the ability to control its use is much more limited.And it’s a very big debate right now in the field. You don’t want to necessarily create regulations that lock in and protect particular corporate actors. At the same time, there is a recognition that open-source models are out there in the world already. The question becomes how the platforms that are going to serve as the dissemination pathways for this stuff think about their role and their policies in what they amplify and curate.What’s the media or the public getting wrong about AI and disinformation?One of the real challenges is that people are going to believe what they see if it conforms to what they want to believe. In a world of unreality in which you can create that content that fulfills that need, one of the real challenges is whether media literacy efforts actually solve any of the problems. Or will we move further into divergent realities – where people are going to continue to hold the belief in something that they’ve seen on the internet as long as it tells them what they want. Larger offline challenges around partisanship and trust are reflected in, and exacerbated by, new technologies that enable this kind of content to propagate online. More

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      Judge rejects Trump bid to move hush money case to federal court as legal challenges gather pace – as it happened

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      From 2h agoA judge has rejected Donald Trump’s bid to move his hush money criminal case to federal court, ruling that the former president had failed to meet a high legal bar for changing jurisdiction.US district judge Alvin Hellerstein’s decision sets the stage for Trump to stand trial in state court in Manhattan as early as next spring, overlapping with the 2024 presidential primary season, AP reported.Manhattan prosecutors charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide reimbursements made to his then fixer, Michael Cohen, for his role in paying $130,000 to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, ahead of the 2016 presidential election.Trump’s lawyers had argued that the case should be moved from New York state court to federal court because he was being prosecuted for an act under the “color of his office” as president.Judge Hellerstein scoffed at the defense claims, finding that the allegations pertained to Trump’s personal life, not presidential duties that would have merited a move to federal court. He wrote in a 25-page ruling:
      The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President – a cover-up of an embarrassing event.
      Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties.
      Here is a recap of today’s developments:
      The letter to Donald Trump by special counsel Jack Smith identifying him as a “target” in the justice department’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection reportedly listed the federal statutes under which the former president could be charged. The letter mentions three federal statutes: conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant, according to several sources, citing sources familiar with the matter.
      Donald Trump sought to downplay his legal challenges while railing against special counsel Jack Smith and the justice department, after announcing he had received a letter naming him as the target of the DoJ’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “I didn’t know practically what a subpoena was and grand juries. Now I’m becoming an expert. I have no choice,” he said on Tuesday night. Trump could face a new indictment as early as the end of the week.
      A federal judge has rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in a civil case brought by E Jean Carroll, where a jury found that he sexually abused her and awarded her $5m in damages. US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ruled that the jury did not reach a “seriously erroneous result” and that the 9 May verdict was not a “miscarriage of justice”.
      A judge rejected Donald Trump’s bid to move his hush money criminal case to federal court, ruling that the former president had failed to meet a high legal bar for changing jurisdiction. The decision sets the stage for Trump to stand trial in state court in Manhattan as early as next spring, overlapping with the 2024 presidential primary season.
      Allies of Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis are reportedly pressing for a shake-up of his campaign amid financial pressure and flagging poll numbers. His campaign manager, Generra Peck, is “hanging by a thread”, according to a DeSantis donor who is close to the campaign, after fewer than 10 staffers were laid off last week.
      Robert Kennedy Jr, a long-shot Democratic candidate for US president, has a long history of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, and should be denied a national platform, according to a damning report seen by the Guardian.
      Half a dozen House Republicans would reportedly support a measure to censure George Santos, the Republican congressman whose résumé has been shown to be largely fabricated and who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.
      The Republican-led House in Alabama approved a new congressional map that would increase the percentage of Black voters – but not by enough, said Black lawmakers who called the map an insult to Black Alabamians and the supreme court.
      Wesleyan University announced it would end legacy admissions, after the supreme court struck down affirmative action in the college admission process last month. A small number of schools have ended the practice of legacy admissions, including Johns Hopkins, MIT and Amherst college.
      The department of justice said that it is assessing the situation by the Texas-Mexico border following “troubling reports” that have emerged over Texas troopers’ treatment of migrants.
      The Republican-led House in Alabama approved a new congressional map on Wednesday that would increase the percentage of Black voters – but not by enough, said Black lawmakers who called the map an insult to Black Alabamians and the supreme court.The House of Representatives voted 74-27 to approve the GOP plan, which came after a supreme court opinion last month found lawmakers previously drew districts that unlawfully dilute the political power of its Black residents in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The bill now moves to the Alabama Senate.While Black people make up about 27% of Alabama’s population, only one of the state’s seven districts is majority-Black.The GOP plan does not establish the second majority-Black district sought by plaintiffs who won the supreme court case, instead it increases the percentage of Black voters to 42% in the district, AP reported.Representative Barbara Drummond, speaking during the floor debate, said:
      This is really a slap in the face, not only to Black Alabamians, but to the supreme court.
      “Once again, the state decided to be on the wrong side of history,” Representative Prince Chestnut said.
      Once again the (Republican) super majority decided that the voting rights of Black people are nothing that this state is bound to respect. And it’s offensive. It’s wrong.
      Half a dozen House Republicans would reportedly support a measure to censure George Santos, the Republican congressman whose résumé has been shown to be largely fabricated and who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.House Democrats unveiled a resolution on Monday to formally reprimand Santos for blatantly lying to voters about his life story.Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito, Marc Molinaro, Nick Langworthy, and Max Miller have all said that they would support the Democrats’ resolution, according to an Axios report. With Republicans holding a 10-seat House majority, it could take as few as five GOP defections for the measure to pass.A banal dystopia where manipulative content is so cheap to make and so easy to produce on a massive scale that it becomes ubiquitous: that’s the political future digital experts are worried about in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI).In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, social media platforms were vectors for misinformation as far-right activists, foreign influence campaigns and fake news sites worked to spread false information and sharpen divisions.Four years later, the 2020 election was overrun with conspiracy theories and baseless claims about voter fraud that were amplified to millions, fueling an anti-democratic movement to overturn the election.Now, as the 2024 presidential election comes into view, experts warn that advances in AI have the potential to take the disinformation tactics of the past and breathe new life into them.AI-generated disinformation not only threatens to deceive audiences, but also erode an already embattled information ecosystem by flooding it with inaccuracies and deceptions, experts say.Read the full story here.A judge has rejected Donald Trump’s bid to move his hush money criminal case to federal court, ruling that the former president had failed to meet a high legal bar for changing jurisdiction.US district judge Alvin Hellerstein’s decision sets the stage for Trump to stand trial in state court in Manhattan as early as next spring, overlapping with the 2024 presidential primary season, AP reported.Manhattan prosecutors charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide reimbursements made to his then fixer, Michael Cohen, for his role in paying $130,000 to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, ahead of the 2016 presidential election.Trump’s lawyers had argued that the case should be moved from New York state court to federal court because he was being prosecuted for an act under the “color of his office” as president.Judge Hellerstein scoffed at the defense claims, finding that the allegations pertained to Trump’s personal life, not presidential duties that would have merited a move to federal court. He wrote in a 25-page ruling:
      The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President – a cover-up of an embarrassing event.
      Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties.
      The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, refused to weigh in on whether Donald Trump should face charges over the January 6th insurrection.Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has also reportedly developed a relationship with her former boss Donald Trump’s rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.Sanders attended a retreat with prominent DeSantis donors last year, and Axios reports that she has become close to DeSantis’s wife, Casey, since their experiences with cancer in recent years.One senior Republican told the news website:
      Sarah reached out to Casey during her treatments and the same thing happened when Sarah had her experience.
      Sanders, 40, is the country’s youngest governor and her allies believe she is positioning herself for a possible presidency run in 2028 or 2032, the report says.Tensions between Donald Trump and his former press secretary, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have grown over her neutrality in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, according to an Axios report.The report outlines how Sanders’s team told the Trump campaign that she wouldn’t make endorsement until after her first legislative session in Arkansas. That session ended in May.Sanders is among several Republicans who have so far stayed neutral in the presidential primary, but Trump sees her in a different category because he hired her to be his press secretary and endorsed her when she ran for governor in 2021, the report writes.Trump reportedly asked Sanders for her endorsement in a phone call earlier this year and she declined, according to the New York Times. Trump denied the report in March, writing:
      I never asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders for an endorsement. I give endorsements, I don’t generally ask for them. With that being said, nobody has done more for her than I have, with the possible exception of her great father, Mike!
      Three weeks after the NYT story was published, Mike Huckabee, Sanders’s father, publicly endorsed Trump on his TV show.Donald Trump has reportedly been seething about the potential new indictment, as he reached out to his top allies to strategize how they could help defend him against potential criminal charges over his effort to overturn the 2020 election.Trump spoke with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik, according to sources, CNN reported.The former president’s call with Stefanik, who leads the House GOP’s messaging efforts, was described as a “long conversation” where the two went over plans to go on the offense on alleged weaponization of the federal government, the report says.Trump asked things like “Can you believe this?” and used vulgarities to vent his displeasure, Politico reported.Donald Trump’s rivals have largely shied away from criticizing his legal woes, with most of the Republican presidential candidates choosing instead to portray the former president’s pending prosecution as a perversion of justice.Besides Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, who have long made clear their view that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election should disqualify him from reelection, there was no discernible movement within the former president’s party against him, according to a NBC report.“This could be different,” said Terry Sullivan, who served as campaign manager for Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 GOP presidential bid.
      Now that being said, Mission Impossible 9 could be different than the first eight Mission Impossibles, but it’s unlikely. It’s likely to end the same way the first eight did.
      Trump’s rivals boxed themselves in on the former president, the January 6 insurrection and the criminal charges against him, the report continues.
      That won’t change unless there’s a massive shift in opinion among Republican primary voters, and Trump’s most prominent rivals are in no position to try to lead such a movement because they already have weighed in on the indictments and Jan. 6.
      A group of 200 lawmakers said they have agreed not to intervene if UPS workers go on strike, Reuters reports.The world’s biggest package delivery firm and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have until midnight on 31 July to reach a contract deal covering some 340,000 workers that sort, load and deliver packages in the United States.
      “We are hopeful that both sides can negotiate in good faith and reach a consensus agreement,” the lawmakers said, adding if no deal is reached they have committed to respect the rights of workers “to withhold their labor and initiate and participate in a strike.”
      UPS workers are currently calling for better pay, more full-time jobs and better workplace health and safety conditions.Despite UPS tentatively agreeing to make Martin Luther King Jr Day a holiday and to install ACs in more of its trucks as temperatures rise, the union for UPS workers said that the company had not agreed to all of its demands.Should a strike happen, Bloomberg estimates that the company could lose a staggering $170m a day.For further details on how likely a UPS workers strike is, click here:The department of justice said that it is assessing the situation by the Texas-Mexico border following “troubling reports” that have emerged over Texas troopers’ treatment of migrants.Speaking to CNN, DoJ spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa said, “The department is aware of the troubling reports, and we are working with DHS and other relevant agencies to assess the situation.”Earlier this week, the Houston Chronicle reported email exchanges between a trooper and a superior over alleged mistreatment of migrants crossing the border.The emails alleged that officers working along the border have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have also told to not give water to migrants, despite scorching temperatures.
      “Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, adding, “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”
      A statement released by Abbott’s office on Tuesday pushed back against the allegations, saying:“No orders or directions have been given under Operation Lone Star that would compromise the lives of those attempting to cross the border illegally.”Amid speculation about whether or not Rudy Giuliani has “flipped” on Donald Trump in the federal investigation of the former president’s election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress, one former Trump White House insider had a somewhat…dry response.The former New York mayor turned Trump adviser and lawyer might have turned on his boss “Cause they don’t have happy hour up the river”, the former insider said in a message viewed by the Guardian.Reports of Giuliani’s fondness for alcohol are legion. “Up the river” is, according to Collins dictionary, an American idiom meaning to be sent “to or confined in a penitentiary”.Speculation about Giuliani flowered on Tuesday after Trump announced that he had received a letter naming him as a target in the investigation led by the special counsel Jack Smith.CNN said Giuliani “did a voluntary interview with special counsel investigators several weeks back” and “his lawyer does not expect him to be charged”.That lawyer, Ted Goodman, said: “Any speculation that Mayor Rudy Giuliani ‘flipped’ against President Donald Trump is as false as previous lies that America’s Mayor” – Giuliani’s post-9/11 nickname – “was somehow a Russian Agent.“In order to ‘flip’ on President Trump – as so many in the anti-Trump media are fantasising over – Mayor Giuliani would’ve had to commit perjury, because all the information he has regarding this case points to President Trump’s innocence.”Many observers pointed out that Giuliani, whose law licenses have come under review arising from his work for Trump, may not be out of the woods on the other investigation of Trump’s election subversion, in Fulton county, Georgia.Some further reading:The letter identifying Donald Trump as a target in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection could mean that the former president face a new indictment as early as the end of the week.“A third indictment appears to be forthcoming,” Brookings Institution senior fellow Benjamin Wittes posted on the Lawfare blog, adding:
      It’s reasonable to expect the grand jury to act as early as the end of this week.
      The Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, has announced he will not be running for re-election next year.Wesleyan University announced it would end legacy admissions, after the supreme court struck down affirmative action in the college admission process last month.In a statement on Wednesday, university president Michael Roth said legacies – a practice that favors relatives of alumni – had played a “negligible role” in the school’s admission process for many years. He added:
      Nevertheless, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action, we believe it important to formally end admission preference for ‘legacy applicants’.
      Relatives of Wesleyan alumni will continue to be admitted to the school “on their own merits”, Roth said.Legacy admissions came under fire after the nation’s highest court ruled that schools could not give preferential treatment to applicants based on race or ethnicity.A small number of schools have ended the practice, including Johns Hopkins, MIT and Amherst college. More

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      The Guardian view on Robert F Kennedy Jr: from Camelot to conspiracy-mongering | Editorial

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, campaigning to be the Democratic nominee for the presidency, likes to call himself a “Kennedy Democrat”. His own siblings disagree. His uncle’s presidency, like his namesake father’s career and presidential campaign, had an aura of hope and responsibility as well as glamour. RFK Jr talks vaguely of overcoming divisions, but in reality trades upon a peculiar blend of “cynicism and credulity”, as one commentator notes. Most recently he claimed that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” in comments reported by the New York Post.However jarring the remarks – he partially backtracked later – they sit comfortably with his long history of fomenting conspiracy theories and his nonsensical, anti-scientific views. He has falsely linked childhood immunisations to autism and wifi to cancer and “leaky brain”, claimed that HIV does not cause Aids, and suggested that chemicals in drinking water could make children transgender. One of his sisters warned that his latest comments put people’s lives in danger.So much for the Kennedy legacy. Nor does he look like much of a Democrat. He is being hyped by billionaires and rightwing broadcasters such as Sean Hannity, and has gained traction among Republicans rather than Democrats. Some see his campaign primarily as a vehicle for his ego and brand, which may be less damaging to President Biden’s chances than a possible third-party bid by Democratic senator Joe Manchin and Republican former governor Jon Huntsman’s No Labels group. A poll this month suggested that a “moderate, independent third-party candidate” could gain about 20% of the vote and result in a second term for Donald Trump. But talk up Mr Kennedy enough and he might have a marginal effect in denting President Biden. Others suspect that Mr Kennedy wants the Republican vice-presidential slot. Steve Bannon and Roger Stone have both floated the idea of a Trump-Kennedy ticket.None of this has prevented him finding up to 20% support among Democrats in polls. Camelot nostalgia and the celebrity factor have clearly played a large part in that. Mr Kennedy has never run for any public office, still less held it, but boasts that he’s “been around” politics since he was a little boy. The lack of enthusiasm for the sitting president is also potent: most Democrats do not want him to run again, although they indicate that they would vote for him over Mr Trump. Voters, including independents, are not giving Mr Biden credit for the improving the economy or other achievements. That may not be fair. But it’s a fact.Mr Kennedy’s appeal goes deeper, however. He has found a home in the world described by a new book, Conspirituality, where new age spirituality and the “wellness” industry overlap with the politics of paranoia, as well as alongside the Trumpian right. Distrust of institutions, suspicion at the marriage of state and corporate power, and fear and sadness at the despoliation of the environment are in themselves reasonable concerns. But the political ambition that feeds upon and mutates them into more poisonous beliefs is unpalatable.Mr Kennedy’s anti-vaccine conspiracy-mongering has caused enough damage. His latest remarks show how easily conspiracy theories blur into bigotry and scapegoating. It may be farcical to hear a multimillionaire from the country’s most famous political dynasty railing against “elites”, but there is nothing funny about this campaign. More

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      Disinformation reimagined: how AI could erode democracy in the 2024 US elections

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      A banal dystopia where manipulative content is so cheap to make and so easy to produce on a massive scale that it becomes ubiquitous: that’s the political future digital experts are worried about in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI).In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, social media platforms were vectors for misinformation as far-right activists, foreign influence campaigns and fake news sites worked to spread false information and sharpen divisions. Four years later, the 2020 election was overrun with conspiracy theories and baseless claims about voter fraud that were amplified to millions, fueling an anti-democratic movement to overturn the election.Now, as the 2024 presidential election comes into view, experts warn that advances in AI have the potential to take the disinformation tactics of the past and breathe new life into them.AI-generated disinformation not only threatens to deceive audiences, but also erode an already embattled information ecosystem by flooding it with inaccuracies and deceptions, experts say.“Degrees of trust will go down, the job of journalists and others who are trying to disseminate actual information will become harder,” said Ben Winters, a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy research non-profit. “It will have no positive effects on the information ecosystem.”New tools for old tacticsArtificial intelligence tools that can create photorealistic images, mimic voice audio and write convincingly human text have surged in use this year, as companies such as OpenAI have released their products on the mass market. The technology, which has already threatened to upend numerous industries and exacerbate existing inequalities, is increasingly being employed to create political content.In past months, an AI-generated image of an explosion at the Pentagon caused a brief dip in the stock market. AI audio parodies of US presidents playing video games became a viral trend. AI-generated images that appeared to show Donald Trump fighting off police officers trying to arrest him circulated widely on social media platforms. The Republican National Committee released an entirely AI-generated ad that showed images of various imagined disasters that would take place if Biden were re-elected, while the American Association of Political Consultants warned that video deepfakes present a “threat to democracy”.In some ways, these images and ads are not so different from the manipulated images and video, misleading messages and robocalls that have been a feature of society for years. But disinformation campaigns formerly faced a range of logistic hurdles – creating individualized messages for social media was incredibly time consuming, as was Photoshopping images and editing videos.Now, though, generative AI has made the creation of such content accessible to anyone with even basic digital skills, amid limited guardrails or effective regulation to curtail it. The potential effect, experts warn, is a sort of democratization and acceleration of propaganda right at a time when several countries enter major election years.AI lowers the bar for disinformationThe potential harms of AI on elections can read like a greatest hits of concerns from past decades of election interference. Social media bots that pretend to be real voters, manipulated videos or images, and even deceptive robocalls are all easier to produce and harder to detect with the help of AI tools.There are also new opportunities for foreign countries to attempt to influence US elections or undermine their integrity, as federal officials have long warned Russia and China are working to do. Language barriers to creating deceptive content are eroding, and telltale signs of scammers or disinformation campaigns using repetitive phrasing or strange word choices are being replaced with more believable texts.“If you’re sitting in a troll farm in a foreign country, you no longer need to be fluent to produce a fluent-sounding article in the language of your target audience,” said Josh Goldstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “You can just have a language model spit out an article with the grammar and vocabulary of a fluent speaker.”AI technology may also intensify voter suppression campaigns to target marginalized communities. Two far-right activists admitted last year to making more than 67,000 robocalls targeting Black voters in the midwest with election misinformation, and experts such as Winters note that AI could hypothetically be used to replicate such a campaign on a greater scale with more personalized information. Audio that mimics elected leaders or trusted personalities could tell select groups of voters misleading information about polls and voting, or cause general confusion.Generating letter-writing campaigns or fake engagement could also create a sort of false constituency, making it unclear how voters are actually responding to issues. As part of a research experiment published earlier this year, Cornell University professors Sarah Kreps and Doug Kriner sent tens of thousands of emails to more than 7,000 state legislators across the country. The emails purported to be from concerned voters, but were split between AI-generated letters and ones written by a human. The responses were virtually the same, with human-written emails receiving only a 2% higher rate of reply than the AI-generated ones.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCampaigns test the watersCampaigns have already begun dabbling in using AI-generated content for political purposes. After Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, announced his candidacy during a Twitter live stream in May, Donald Trump mocked his opponent with a parody video of the announcement that featured the AI-generated voices of DeSantis, Elon Musk and Adolf Hitler. Last month, the DeSantis campaign shared AI-generated images of Trump embracing and kissing Anthony Fauci.During the 2016 and 2020 elections, Trump’s campaign leaned heavily on memes and videos made by his supporters – including deceptively edited videos that made it seem like Biden was slurring his words or saying that he shouldn’t be president. The AI version of that strategy is creeping in, election observers warn, with Trump sharing a deepfake video in May of the CNN host Anderson Cooper telling viewers that they had just watched “Trump ripping us a new asshole here on CNN’s live presidential town hall”.With about 16 months to go until the presidential election and widespread generative AI use still in its early days, it’s an open question what role artificial intelligence will play in the vote. The creation of misleading AI-generated content alone doesn’t mean that it will have an effect on an election, researchers say, and measuring the impact of disinformation campaigns is a notoriously difficult task. It’s one thing to monitor the engagement of fake materials but another to gauge the secondary effects of polluting the information ecosystem to the point where people generally distrust any information they consume online.But there are concerning signs. Just as the use of generative AI is increasing, many of the social media platforms that bad actors rely on to spread disinformation have begun rolling back some of their content moderation measures – YouTube reversed its election integrity policy, Instagram allowed the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr back on its platform and Twitter’s head of content moderation left the company in June amid a general fall in standards under Elon Musk.It remains to be seen how effective media literacy and traditional means of factchecking can be in pushing back against a deluge of misleading text and images, researchers say, as the potential scale of generated content represents a new challenge.“AI-generated images and videos can be created much more quickly than factcheckers can review and debunk them,” Goldstein said, adding that hype over AI can also corrode trust by making the public believe anything could be artificially generated.Some generative AI services, including ChatGPT, do have policies and safeguards against generating misinformation and in certain cases are able to block the service from being used for that purpose. But it’s still unclear how effective those are, and several open-source models lack such policies and features.“There’s not really going to be sufficient control of dissemination,” Winters said. “There’s no shortage of robocallers, robo emailers or texters, and mass email platforms. There’s nothing limiting the use of those.” More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says

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      Robert Kennedy Jr, a long-shot Democratic candidate for US president, has a long history of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, and should be denied a national platform, according to a damning report seen by the Guardian.Kennedy, who provoked anger last week when he was filmed falsely suggesting that the coronavirus could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, is due to testify at the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday.The Congressional Integrity Project, a political watchdog, called for Republicans to disinvite Kennedy after releasing a report that details his meetings with and promotion of racists, antisemites and extremist conspiracy theorists.“Kennedy embraces virtually every conspiracy theory in existence,” the report states. “His horrific antisemitic and xenophobic views are simply beyond the pale, and he has frequently met with and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theorists. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine conspiracies go back decades and have had deadly real world consequences.”Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, is running against Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary and has drawn big and enthusiastic crowds and polled as high as 20%. But the Project’s document argues that Kennedy’s recent comments about Jewish and Chinese people, which were quickly hailed by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers as “100% correct”, were not an aberration but fitted a long pattern.Earlier this summer Kennedy touted a meeting with Ice Cube, a rapper who issued bizarre antisemitic tweets, and publicly defended musician Roger Waters, who was embroiled in controversy after donning a costume intended to evoke Nazi attire at a concert in Germany.The report says Kennedy has also repeatedly promoted and praised fringe online broadcaster James Corbett, a Sandy Hook and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has claimed that “Hitler and the Nazis were 100% completely and utterly set up”.Kennedy has often allied himself with the National of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, who regularly unleashed tirades about alleged Jewish control of media and government. Kennedy met Farrakhan at his Chicago home in 2015, with Farrakhan later tweeting that they discussed “a vaccine that is designed to affect Black males”.The Project details how Kennedy himself has frequently invoked Nazi Germany when pushing debunked theories about vaccines. He put out a video that showed the infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci with a moustache reminiscent of Adolf Hitler and used the word “holocaust” to describe children he believes were hurt by vaccines in 2015.Last year, at a Washington rally organized by his group Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy complained that people’s rights were being violated by public health measures that had been taken to reduce the number of people sickened and killed by Covid-19. He said: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” He later apologised.For years, the document says, Kennedy has targeted a particularly dangerous form of vaccine denial at Black people. In 2021 at the height of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, he released Medical Racism, a film that promoted disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines and explicitly warned communities of color to be suspicious of “sinister” vaccination campaigns.Several doctors and experts who participated in the film later denounced it and said they felt used and misled about the message of the documentary. Richard Allen Williams, founder of the Association of Black Cardiologists, called Children’s Health Defense “absolutely a racist operation” particularly dangerous to the Black community.In 2017, as a measles outbreak devastated Minnesota’s Somali-American community due to low vaccination rates, Kennedy continued to push his false claims that “science and anecdotal evidence suggest that Africans and African Americans may be particularly vulnerable to vaccine injuries including autism”.In a 2020 interview, Kennedy asserted without evidence that “People with African blood react differently to vaccines than people with Caucasian blood. They’re much more sensitive.”The following year, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy recorded a webinar encouraging Black people to be skeptical of vaccines, claiming: “There has been abundant evidence … beyond any dispute that Blacks are disproportionately harmed by vaccine injury,” adding: “Blacks react completely differently to vaccines … we now know it’s just one huge experiment on Black Americans, and they know what is happening and they are doing nothing.”The report also argues that, from the earliest days of Operation Warp Speed, Kennedy has built “an anti-vaccine juggernaut” around opposition to Covid-19 vaccinations, which he has called “the deadliest vaccine ever made”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has sought to frame Covid vaccines as an elaborate conspiracy to enrich the medical establishment and big pharmaceutical companies. In a YouTube video, Kennedy accused Bill Gates of developing an “injectable chip” to enable the tracking of human movements and attempting to “genetically modify” humanity to “the flow of global information”.Kennedy has even accused his former anti-vaccine ally, Donald Trump, of selling out to Pfizer by developing vaccines.Such anti-scientific views go way back. Kennedy has claimed that fluoridated water is “drugging” children, HIV does not cause Aids and chemicals in the water are making people gay or transgender as well as pushing nonsensical conspiracy theories about wifi and 5G cellular networks.As the son of former attorney general Robert Kennedy, and nephew of former president John F Kennedy, Kennedy has caused anguish to one of America’s most storied political dynasties with his toxic views.In 2019 three relatives wrote an opinion column for the Politico website condemning his anti-vaccine advocacy, which they held partially responsible for a measles outbreak.The Congressional Integrity Project contends that Kennedy is a “Republican stooge” who is being embraced by the far right in an attempt to damage Biden. He has become a regular guest on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and other rightwing outlets. Far-right provocateurs Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones and Michael Flynn have praised him.Now Republicans have invited Kennedy to Congress. On Thursday he is due to address the House of Representatives’ select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government during a hearing to examine “the federal government’s role in censoring Americans”. The panel is chaired by the Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, who has been criticised for launching bogus investigations into Biden.Kyle Herrig, executive director of Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Giving RFK Jr a platform to spread dangerous conspiracy theories and xenophobic and antisemitic rhetoric is a new low for Jim Jordan – and that says something.“Jim Jordan should stop the charade and disinvite RFK Jr immediately. Allowing this hearing to go forward is shameless and beyond the pale. Maga Republicans’ desperation is on full display this week, proving once again that they have no credibility to conduct legitimate investigations.” More

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      DeSantis attacks DoJ’s Trump letter during rare CNN interview – as it happened

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      From 1h agoRon DeSantis is defending Donald Trump, his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, during his first non-Fox News interview.Florida’s governor is speaking on CNN now, repeating the former president’s claim that the justice department is being “weaponized”, though, notably, trying to distance himself from Trump over his January 6 conduct.DeSantis told host Jake Tapper:
      This country is going down the road of criminalizing political differences. And I think that’s wrong. [Manhattan district attorney] Alvin Bragg stretched the statute to be able to try to target Donald Trump.
      Most people, even people on the left, acknowledge if that wasn’t Trump, that case would not have likely been brought against the normal civilian.
      As president, my job is to restore a single standard of justice to end weaponization of these agencies. We’re gonna have a new FBI director on day one, we’re gonna have big changes at the department of justice.
      Americans across the political spectrum, need to have confidence that what is going on is based on the rule of law, not based on what political tribe you’re in.
      DeSantis’s interview looks like it’s going to be played in chunks throughout the coming hour, rather than as one big block.Before it began, Tapper wondered at the timing of Trump’s decision to announce he had received the “target” letter from justice department special counsel Jack Smith, noting it was suspiciously close to the DeSantis interview.The Trump target letter story has dominated the day’s headlines and assuredly stolen some of DeSantis’s thunder.Ron DeSantis’s brief interview on CNN has finished, and we’re closing the US politics blog now. But look out shortly for my colleague Martin Pengelly’s analysis of what DeSantis had to say.We’ll leave you with news, as promised, of the decision by authorities in Michigan to charge 16 “fake electors” over the scheme to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.Please join us again tomorrow for what is shaping up to be another lively day.Ron DeSantis claims he’s “doing better than everybody else” in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite overwhelming evidence he is far behind Donald Trump.The eye-raising claim came as he attempted to explain his lackluster recent polling in his CNN interview, which, as we’ve noted, is the first time the rightwing Republican governor has strayed beyond the friendly confines of Fox News.He referenced his re-election in Florida in November:
      I took a state that had been a one-point state, and we won it by 20 percentage points, 1.5 million votes. Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms, we’re leading a big movement for parents be involved in education, school choice, get the indoctrination out of schools.
      I was getting a lot of media attention at the time coming off the victory. I had to do my job as governor with my legislative session, and we had a great legislative session. I had to do that and I was basically taking fire.
      A lot of people view me as a threat. I think the left views me as a threat because they think I’ll beat Biden and actually deliver on all this stuff. And then of course people that have their allegiances … [and people] have gone after me.
      But the reality is this is a state by state process. I’m not running a campaign to try to juice you know, whatever we are in the national polls, and then whatever we did in the CNN [poll]. It’s fine. I’m definitely doing better than everybody else.
      Ron DeSantis is insisting that “nobody really knows what wokeness is” as he attempts to defend his attacks on the US military for being “woke”.The Florida governor and presidential hopeful gave a campaign speech earlier today condemning “woke” in the armed forces that he says is becoming a deterrent to recruitment.Jake Tapper, the CNN host of DeSantis’s interview, is pushing back, citing recruitment statistics that say “wokeness” in the military is a long way down the list.DeSantis said:
      People see the military losing its way, not focusing on the mission, and focusing on a lot of these other things, which we see that in other aspects of society.
      People want to join the military because they think it’s something different. And I think some of the civilian leaders in the military are trying to have the military mimic corporate America, academia, that’s ultimately not going to work.
      Nobody really knows what wokeness is. I defined it, but a lot of people who railed against wokeness can’t even define it. There’s huge amount of concern about the direction that the military is going with all this.
      DeSantis brushed off a question on the war in Ukraine, calling it a “secondary or tertiary” priority for the US:
      The number one threat to our country is from China. We are going to approach the world instead of Europe being the focus, like it has been since world war two, and it was understandable why it would be, Nato stopping the Soviets, but now the Asia Pacific really needs to be to our generation what Europe was to the post-world war two generation.
      Prosecutors in Michigan have filed felony charges against 16 state residents “for their role in the alleged false electors scheme” that followed the 2020 US presidential election.The scheme, repeated in several swing states, attempted to install voters to falsely certify that Donald Trump had won the state, and deny Joe Biden victory.We’ll have more details soon.The court hearing in Fort Pierce, Florida, has wrapped up, with federal judge Aileen Cannon indicating she is not minded to move towards a quick trial for Donald Trump over his hoarding of classified documents.According to the CNN account of proceedings, Cannon, a Trump appointee, called the justice department’s proposed timeline for a December start as “rushed”, and she “challenged prosecutors to explain to her exactly how this was not what is called a complex trial”, referring to the espionage element of some of the charges against Trump.Lawyers for the defense also spoke, arguing Trump “is unlike any other defendant”, and repeating their request to delay the trial until after the 2024 election.While Cannon reportedly does not look minded to grant that request, she said she would look at the timeline and make a ruling shortly.Ron DeSantis is defending Donald Trump, his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, during his first non-Fox News interview.Florida’s governor is speaking on CNN now, repeating the former president’s claim that the justice department is being “weaponized”, though, notably, trying to distance himself from Trump over his January 6 conduct.DeSantis told host Jake Tapper:
      This country is going down the road of criminalizing political differences. And I think that’s wrong. [Manhattan district attorney] Alvin Bragg stretched the statute to be able to try to target Donald Trump.
      Most people, even people on the left, acknowledge if that wasn’t Trump, that case would not have likely been brought against the normal civilian.
      As president, my job is to restore a single standard of justice to end weaponization of these agencies. We’re gonna have a new FBI director on day one, we’re gonna have big changes at the department of justice.
      Americans across the political spectrum, need to have confidence that what is going on is based on the rule of law, not based on what political tribe you’re in.
      DeSantis’s interview looks like it’s going to be played in chunks throughout the coming hour, rather than as one big block.Before it began, Tapper wondered at the timing of Trump’s decision to announce he had received the “target” letter from justice department special counsel Jack Smith, noting it was suspiciously close to the DeSantis interview.The Trump target letter story has dominated the day’s headlines and assuredly stolen some of DeSantis’s thunder.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      A new indictment for Donald Trump could be imminent after the former US president announced on Tuesday morning he had received a letter from special prosecutor Jack Smith identifying him as a “target” in the justice department’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection. People who receive target letters from federal authorities are often – but not always – indicted. It is unclear what specific charges Trump could face.
      Federal prosecutors have reportedly interviewed officials from all seven battleground states targeted by former Trump and his allies in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results – Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Mexico.
      Republicans defended Trump after news of the latest development, criticizing the Biden administration for his prosecution. Speaker Kevin McCarthysuggested the government was targeting Trump out of fear he could win next November, while House majority leader Steve Scalise questioned the timing of the new development in the January 6 investigation.
      President Joe Biden “respects the Department of Justice, their independence”, the White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing.
      Lawyers for Trump and federal prosecutors have appeared before US district judge Aileen Cannon for a first hearing in Florida that could decide the crucial timing of the former president’s criminal case concerning the mishandling of classified documents. Tuesday’s session is Cannon’s first time hearing arguments in the case since Trump’s indictment last month.
      Trump is already facing criminal charges in Florida for illegally hoarding classified documents from his presidency, and prosecution in New York for a hush-money payment to an adult movie star.
      Trump is also under investigation in Fulton county, Georgia, for efforts to overturn his defeat to Biden there. Georgia’s supreme court on Monday unanimously rejected a request by Trump to block the prosecutor, Fani Willis, from prosecuting the case. His lawyers had argued that a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry should be thrown out.
      Ron DeSantis is formally a candidate in South Carolina’s 2024 presidential primary after the Republican Florida governor filed paperwork during a campaign stop. He’s the first presidential candidate from either major political party on the ballot for the primary, which will take place on 3 February, the first of any other southern state.
      Democratic divisions over Israel were on stark display, as lawmakers prepared to welcome Isaac “Bougie” Herzog, the president of Israel, for an address to a joint session of Congress. Several progressive House members, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, intend to boycott Herzog’s speech on Wednesday to protest the treatment of Palestinians under the government of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
      US district judge Aileen Cannon said a proposal from federal prosecutors that a trial in the classified documents case against Donald Trump and his aide, Walt Nauta, be held in mid-December was “a bit rushed”, CNN is reporting. Cannon did not decide on a trial date but said she plans to “promptly” issue an order on the matter, the news channel said.Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is due to sit down with CNN’s Jake Tapper for a rare interview that will air at 4pm ET.It will be his first discussion with a major news organization other than Fox News.The interview comes days after a report said DeSantis had reduced campaign staff as his campaign has struggled to meet fundraising goals. Fewer than 10 staffers were reportedly laid off.Democratic divisions over Israel were on stark display on Tuesday, as lawmakers prepared to welcome Isaac “Bougie” Herzog, the president of Israel, for an address to a joint session of Congress.Several progressive House members, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, intend to boycott Herzog’s speech on Wednesday to protest the treatment of Palestinians under the government of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.“In solidarity with the Palestinian people and all those who have been harmed by Israel’s apartheid government, I will be boycotting President Herzog’s joint address to Congress,” Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat of Michigan, said on Monday.
      I urge all members of Congress who stand for human rights for all to join me.
      House Democratic leaders have struck a much more conciliatory tone toward Herzog, embracing the opportunity to hear from the Israeli president.“President Bougie Herzog has been a force for good in Israeli society,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said on Friday.
      I look forward to welcoming him with open arms when he comes to speak before Congress.
      The tension between House Democrats reached a boiling point over the weekend, after Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, described Israel as a “racist state” while speaking at a conference in Chicago. More

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      White House condemns Robert Kennedy Jr’s Covid claims as ‘vile’ – live

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      From 2h agoWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has taken the chance to condemn remarks made by presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr after a video surfaced of him making false claims that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups.Kennedy, the infamous conspiracy theorist, famous scion and rogue candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination hit the headlines at the weekend after it emerged that he said at a press event in New York City last week that the coronavirus is a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, the New York Post reported at the weekend.Kennedy is garnering loud and swift criticism, including from members of his own family. The White House was asked about it during the press briefing today and Jean-Pierry called Kennedy’s remarks not just “false” but also “vile”.The briefing is ongoing. Oh! It just wrapped up.Close Kennedy family members weighing in reflects the growing outrage at Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy Jr’s words, which he tried to disavow on Monday in a statement sent to the Guardian by his campaign staff.The statement reads:
      The New York Post story is mistaken. I have never, ever suggested that the Covid-19 virus was engineered to ‘spare Jews,’ and I unequivocally reject this disgusting and outlandish conspiracy theory.
      New York Post reporter Jon Levine exploited this off-the-record conversation to smear me as an antisemite. This cynical maneuver is consistent with the mainstream media playbook to discredit me as a crank – and by association, to discredit revelations of genuine corruption and collusion.
      Separate messages sent to the Guardian purportedly from Kennedy’s personal email address cite Wikipedia links to press articles about the plausibility of ethnically-targeted bioweapons.“The study is solid, and not at all controversial,” one of the messages says of a research paper by the British Medical Association, reported by the Guardian in 2004, that “rogue scientists” could develop bioweapons designed to target certain ethnic groups based on their genetic differences.An Iowa judge has temporarily blocked the state’s new abortion ban from taking effect on Monday, just days after Governor Kim Reynolds signed the measure into law.Polk County District Court Judge Joseph Seidlin ruled that a lawsuit by abortion providers is likely to succeed, and the temporary injunction will remain in place for the duration of the lawsuit.The move restores access to abortion in Iowa for up to 20 weeks of pregnancy while the courts assess the new law’s constitutionality.Last week, Iowa lawmakers passed a six-week ban on abortion in a rare special legislative session, called by Governor Reynolds, who signed the bill on Friday afternoon.The law would ban almost all abortions once cardiac activity can be detected, which is usually six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant. Prior to the law, abortion was legal in the state up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is speaking at an event hosted by the moderate group No Labels, fueling speculation that he could run on a third-party ticket for the presidency.Manchin has not declared whether he will run, but it’s difficult to see how his flirtation with No Labels would amount to a serious candidacy, according to a Vox report.
      It’s true that many Democrats don’t want Biden to run again, and many Republicans say the same of Trump, who is the current GOP frontrunner. But while 2024 may shape up to be the rematch no one asked for, third-party candidates don’t have a successful track record in the US, and there’s no indication a third-party candidate would be able to launch a credible challenge to either party’s nominee this time. If Manchin or another third-party candidate runs, they would probably lose badly.
      They might, however, get enough support among moderates to derail Biden in states that he narrowly won in 2020, despite No Labels co-chair Joe Lieberman’s assurances that his group is not looking to get in the race for a “spoiler.”
      The White House’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, described Robert F Kennedy’s comments that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people as false” and “vile”.“The claims made on that tape is false,” she said during a press briefing earlier this afternoon.
      It is vile, and they put our fellow Americans in danger.
      She declined to discuss Kennedy directly, citing the legal constraints on the administration’s ability to address campaign matters. But she warned that the presidential candidate’s remarks amounted to encouraging racist theories around the virus.
      If you think about the racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories that come out of saying those type of things, it’s an attack on our fellow citizens.
      And so it’s important that we essentially speak out when we hear those claims more broadly.
      She also cited a statement from the American Jewish Committee that called Kennedy’s claims “deeply offensive” and reflective of “some of the most abhorrent antisemitic conspiracy theories throughout history.” Jean-Pierre added:
      This is something that this president, and this whole administration, is going to stand against.
      Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who is due to speak at this evening’s No Labels event in New Hampshire, has insisted it is “not a campaign”.Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds dodged a question about whether she would be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s running mate if he won the Republican presidential primary.DeSantis, at a fundraising event on Saturday, told reporters that he would consider Reynolds as a pick for vice president if he won the GOP nomination.Asked about DeSantis’s comments, Reynolds told Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt:
      I appreciate the comments. But look, I’m so focused. We are implementing a boldest universal school choice plan in the country. I just called a special session last week. This last week we passed the fetal heartbeat bill, and I actually cut state government and I cut 21 agencies from my Cabinet and we’re implementing our alignment bill.
      She added:
      So I’m busy working on being governor of the great state of Iowa and I’m already working on cutting taxes again next year. So that’s my focus right now.
      Donald Trump last week expressed his frustration with Reynolds for declining to endorse a candidate early in the race. In a post to Truth Social, Trump wrote:
      I opened up the Governor position for Kim Reynolds, & when she fell behind, I ENDORSED her, did big Rallies, & she won. Now, she wants to remain ‘NEUTRAL.’ I don’t invite her to events! DeSanctus down 45 points!
      DeSantis, speaking on Saturday, also dismissed Trump’s criticism of Reynolds, saying:
      I thought the attacks on her were totally, totally out of hand and totally unnecessary.
      Joe Kennedy III, a former congressman from Massachusetts and nephew of Robert F Kennedy Jr, has publicly distanced himself from his uncle’s latest comments.Robert F Kennedy’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, has also sharply criticised his remarks about Covid.A leading environmental group has hit out at US climate envoy John Kerry over comments he made rejecting calls for the US to pay climate reparations to developing countries affected by climate-change fueled disasters.On Friday, at a congressional hearing on the state department’s climate agenda, Kerry said that “under no circumstances” would the US meet reparations demands. However, the US has previously committed to contributing to a “loss and damages” fund for developing countries that does not involve statements of liability.“We are disappointed and angered by this news, but not surprised, because John Kerry’s words are just the latest example of Kerry and the US refusing to back up their vague claims for US support in global climate progress with real, substantive action,” said Jeff Ordower, North America director of the climate advocacy group 350.0rg.Ordower added that Kerry and president Biden “have tried to walk a tightrope of limited culpability: they talk a big game about “interconnected nations” and “the need for a fossil fuel phasedown,” but shied away “when it comes to “put their words into practice.”The criticism comes as Kerry met with Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Beijing to urge joint action to cut methane emissions and coal-fired power.“In the next three days we hope we can begin taking some big steps that will send a signal to the world about the serious purpose of China and the United States to address a common risk, threat, challenge to all of humanity created by humans themselves,” Kerry said, according to Reuters.“It is toxic for both Chinese and for Americans and for people in every country on the planet.”The US climate envoy’s comments came as temperature records in the US, Europe and China are coming close to being broken this week, alongside intense rain and flooding in other areas that are collectively pushing climate change issue to the top of the global political agenda.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has taken the chance to condemn remarks made by presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr after a video surfaced of him making false claims that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups.Kennedy, the infamous conspiracy theorist, famous scion and rogue candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination hit the headlines at the weekend after it emerged that he said at a press event in New York City last week that the coronavirus is a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, the New York Post reported at the weekend.Kennedy is garnering loud and swift criticism, including from members of his own family. The White House was asked about it during the press briefing today and Jean-Pierry called Kennedy’s remarks not just “false” but also “vile”.The briefing is ongoing. Oh! It just wrapped up.The US is not in a position to attribute the overnight attack that damaged the road bridge linking Crimea to southern Russia, the White House has stated on Monday.The White House daily media briefing is still underway and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is taking questions now. But a little earlier, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was at the podium and his part of the briefing mainly focused on foreign policy and overseas news.Kirby was not prepared to commit to naming the perpetrator of the attack on the bridge. We’ve been covering this topic in our Ukraine war live blog, but that is closing now. It will be back on Tuesday.Russian president Vladimir Putin has attributed the overnight attack to Ukraine and said that his forces are preparing a response.You can read the Guardian’s full report on this topic here.Robert F Kennedy’s sister is among those who have sharply criticised his remarks about Covid.Kerry Kennedy wrote on Twitter: “I strongly condemn my brother’s deplorable and untruthful remarks last week about Covid being engineered for ethnic targeting.”Democrats were quick to distance themselves from presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr after a video surfaced of him making false claims that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups.Kennedy’s comments included “reprehensible anti-semitic and anti-Asian comments aimed at perpetuating harmful and debunked racist tropes, the Democratic congressional campaign committee said in a statement. The Democratic presidential candidate’s attempt to repurpose fringe-right conspiracy theories is not new for his candidacy, the Washington Post reported. The paper compares Kennedy’s remarks to how Donald Trump offered a conspiratorial right-wing worldview to Republican primary voters in 2015.
      It’s not surprising that the party’s institutions and leaders would take this tack; the Democratic Party is keenly attuned to racist stereotypes and antisemitism. But it is also not much of a burden. Kennedy’s support in the primary is not particularly robust relative to the incumbent president, and his long-standing conspiratorial rhetoric has not been effective at building a constituency. The party is certainly eager that it doesn’t.
      Compare the response here with the Republican Party’s response to Donald Trump in 2015. The chairman of the party then, Reince Priebus, didn’t excoriate Trump’s repeated rhetoric about criminal immigrants on social media. The party doesn’t appear to have done so either […] For the GOP, Trump’s controversial comments were already accepted by a large segment of its base, which is why his candidacy quickly gained traction.
      There is an interesting question inherent to the Kennedy situation for the Democratic Party: How accountable is it for the espoused views of one of its candidates for the presidential nomination? What is it about Kennedy that demands a response at all? Is it his name? Because he’s getting more than zero percent in polls? Is it simply that Kennedy affords Democrats an opportunity to reinforce who they are relative to what he presents?
      West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who is set to headline the No Labels event in New Hampshire later today, is arguably the most conservative Democratic senator.Manchin has not declared yet whether he will run for reelection to his Senate seat. He has told reporters that he will wait until late this year before announcing whether he will run.Should Manchin seek another term, he would face a serious challenge from Governor Jim Justice, who is seeking the Republican nomination in the Senate race. West Virginia has been leaning heavily Republican, having overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.Manchin has at times complicated legislative initiatives being pushed by his party leaders, Reuters reported. But Democratic leaders have treaded softly as Manchin also has been key to the party holding on to its Senate majority.Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr faced widespread criticism over the weekend after a video surfaced of him making false claims that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.The New York Post on Saturday originally published a clip of Kennedy’s conspiracy theory comments, made during a recent dinner in New York City. In the recording, Kennedy can be heard making a series of false and misleading claims, including saying:
      Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
      Kennedy is also heard saying:
      We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.
      Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, said Kennedy’s comments are “deeply offensive and incredibly dangerous” in a tweet on Saturday.The Anti-Defamation League told multiple outlets that Kennedy’s comment “feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Covid-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.”Democratic national committee chair Jaime Harrison condemned Kennedy’s remarks and said they do not reflect the views of the party.Joe Biden has invited Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Washington for an official visit, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.The two leaders shared a “long and warm” conversation where they discussed curbing threats from Iran and its proxies and strengthening the alliance between the two countries, the Israeli statement said.The invitation comes more than seven months after Netanyahu was sworn in as prime minister. The delay was viewed as a major snub from Biden, as most Israeli prime ministers had already received an invitation to the White House this far into their terms.The phone call between the two leaders took place as Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, is traveling to Washington for meetings with Biden and to address a joint address to Congress.Ohio secretary of state Frank LaRose formally announced his candidacy for US Senate today, becoming the third prominent Republican hoping to challenge Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in 2024.“It’s official: I’m running,” LaRose said on Twitter.
      I’m on a mission to give back to the state that has given me so much. To continue to serve the country I love and fight to protect the values we share. That’s why I’m running to serve as your next United States senator.
      LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state since 2019, is the third major candidate to jump into the primary to take on Brown. He follows Bernie Moreno, a businessman running with Donald Trump’s encouragement, and state senator Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team.Ohio’s Senate race looks to be one of the most competitive in the country next year, alongside races in Arizona, Montana and West Virginia. The state backed Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections.New York mayor Eric Adams has appointed Edward Caban as the first Hispanic officer to lead the city’s police department in its 178-year history.Adams announced the appointment of Caban, 55, in a morning news conference outside the 40th Precinct in the South Bronx, where Caban began his career as an officer in 1991.Caban had been instrumental to the NYPD’s efforts to decrease crime after the Covid-19 pandemic, Mayor Adams said, noting that major crimes are down across the city this summer. He added:
      Commissioner Caban is truly one of New York’s finest, a leader who understands the importance of both safety and justice.
      Caban stepped in as acting police chief after the surprise resignation of Keechant Sewell, the first woman to lead the department, last month.Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has reduced campaign staff as his campaign has struggled to meet fundraising goals.Fewer than 10 staffers were laid off, according to an anonymous staffer, reported Politico. The staffers were involved in event planning and may be picked up by the pro-DeSantis super Pac Never Back Down. Two senior campaign advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, left the campaign this past week to assist a pro-DeSantis nonprofit group.Sources within the campaign reported an internal assessment that the campaign hired too many staffers too early.“They never should have brought so many people on; the burn rate was way too high,” said one Republican source familiar with the campaign’s thought process to NBC News. “People warned the campaign manager but she wanted to hear none of it.”More shake-ups within the campaign are expected in the coming weeks after two months on the presidential campaign, with DeSantis still lagging substantially in second place behind former president Donald Trump.Even in DeSantis’s home state of Florida, Trump still has a 20-point lead over the governor, according to a recent Florida Atlantic University poll. More