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      Memoir contradicts Republican Senate candidate’s ‘below the poverty line’ tale

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      At a recent campaign event in Whitehall, Montana, the Republican US Senate candidate Tim Sheehy told voters that a decade ago, when he set up the aerial firefighting company through which he made his fortune, he and his wife were living “below the poverty line”.“My wife and I homeschool our kids,” Sheehy said. “We made that decision several years ago. She’s a Marine, naval academy graduate, she could have a great job and even when our company was tiny, and we … were below the poverty line and making no money, we said: ‘No … the most important job in the world is being a mother.’ And she’s doing that every day.”A little more than a month from election day, in a race that could decide control of the Senate, such hardscrabble tales are helping Sheehy lead the Democratic incumbent, Jon Tester, a longtime Montana farmer. The two men are due to debate in Missoula on Monday night.But Sheehy’s claim about living in poverty while building his company, Bridger Aerospace, is contradicted by his own memoir.In that book, Mudslingers, published last year, the former navy Seal writes that when he and his wife contemplated leaving the military, in 2013, they “weren’t wealthy, but … did have resources”.This, he writes, was in part thanks to having “lived quite frugally during our time in the military, spending a lot of time deployed, accumulating savings, taking advantage of base housing and meals, and of course spending almost nothing while on deployment.“So, we had amassed a nest egg of close to $300,000. I also had some money that my parents had been putting away for me since I was a kid. All told, we had roughly $400,000 to allocate toward building a business and establishing a new life.”In 2014, as Sheehy got his company going, the US health department defined the poverty guideline for a family of three in Montana as $19,790. The poverty threshold, as defined by the US Census Bureau, was $19,055.By his own account, Sheehy set out to build Bridger Aerospace with 20 times that – a sum he calls “not exactly chump change”.Sheehy has also regularly claimed to have “bootstrapped” his company, a term the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as “to promote or develop by initiative and effort with little or no assistance”.Yet in his book, Sheehy describes both receiving the $100,000 his parents had saved for him and asking his father and brother to help him pay $500,000 to buy necessary planes. His father, he writes, “backed me, financially and emotionally, without expecting anything in return”, while his brother was given an “equity stake in the business”.Sheehy also describes how in 2017 his brother helped secure investment from Blackstone Group, the New York private equity behemoth led by Stephen Schwartzman, a top Republican donor, in order to pull off a $200m aircraft order.Sheehy grew up in Minnesota and attended the US Naval Academy in Maryland. Describing his early days in Montana, he has often told of how he, his wife and their first child started out living in a tent. That might boost his claim of living below the poverty line, but Sheehy has also described how living under canvas was a choice.Having purchased “60 undeveloped acres”, Sheehy writes in his book, “the simple and probably sane thing to do would have been to rent an apartment in town while we got the business off the ground”. But they chose to build a house, and to camp while the structure went up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSheehy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. News of Sheehy’s book contradicting his own claim about living in poverty, however, follows similar reporting regarding his claims about his background.The Montana Free Press was among outlets to report that though Sheehy has said he grew up in “rural Minnesota … surrounded by farmland”, he in fact “grew up in a multimillion-dollar lake house, learned to fly under the tutelage of a neighbour, [and] attended a private high school”.In May, the Daily Beast reported that Sheehy’s campaign trail claims about how he left the US military do not match those in his book. Sheehy’s campaign responded angrily, claiming an attack on his patriotism and service. Then, this month, the Guardian reported documents seemingly showing Sheehy did not follow Department of Defense protocol for clearing sections of Mudslingers that deal with military subjects, including deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The campaign did not respond.Regardless, Sheehy seems well-placed to secure a Senate seat, holding seven- and eight-point leads over Tester, a three-term moderate Democrat.Federal figures regarding poverty in Montana in 2014 do back up one claim in Sheehy’s book. Describing how he hired his first employees, he says he paid just $1,500 a month, amounting to $18,000 a year, to his first chief pilot, Tim Cherwin.Cherwin brought with him “the chain-smoking desert rat Steve Taylor, who would become our director of maintenance”. Sheehy, who says he started the business with $400,000, says both men were “earning wages below the poverty line”. More

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      Trump takes stage at Wisconsin rally and continues anti-immigrant rhetoric – live

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      JD Vance accused Kamala Harris of flip-flopping on a series of major issues, such as fracking, Medicare for undocumented immigrants, private health insurance, and defunding the police.“Kamala, if you support fracking, if you support the police, if you support lower prices, and you want to close down the southern border, you’re welcome to endorse Donald J Trump,” Vance said. “All of us have done it, and you’re welcome to join the team.”JD Vance claims that Harris played a role in worsening the economy by exacerbating inflation.He linked the country’s economic woes to immigration, blaming Harris for what he describes as an “invasion” amid a lack of border control.Vance claimed that the presence of immigrants in the US is contributing to rising housing costs.He went on to make anti-immigrant remarks.JD Vance quickly touched a soft spot for the state of Pennsylvania: Natural gas.Vice President Kamala Harris says she doesn’t oppose fracking, despite prior assertions stating otherwise, but Republicans are still wielding her previous position to win over voters.“When Donald Trump is president, we are going to drill, baby, drill and bring back the great American energy economy,” Vance said during his speech. “She is the candidate of not buying oil and gas from Americans and Pennsylvanians. Kamala Harris wants us to buy energy from every tin pot dictator all over the world.”JD Vance attacked Kamala Harris, going back to her first solo interview on Wednesday, by saying she dodges questions on the economy by talking about her middle-class background and her former stint at McDonald’s.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” he said. “The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no plan. And the problem with Kamala Harris is that she has been the vice-president for three-and-a-half years and has failed this country.’”Senator JD Vance took the stage in Pennsylvania.“We have got a hell of a crowd here in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said at the start of his speech. “We’re gonna turn Pennsylvania red, send Kamala Harris back in and send Donald Trump back to the White House.”Senator JD Vance is expected to deliver a speech in Newton, Pennsylvania, in a few minutes.The event at the Newtown Sports and Event Center comes as polls show a neck-and-neck race for president in battleground Pennsylvania.We’ll be covering the Republican vice-presidential pick’s remarks.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Wisconsin just before 5pm ET.His remarks mostly revolved around his proposed border policies and an anti-immigrant framing of the country.The mother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five who was killed last year, took the stage briefly in Prairie du Chien.After Rachel’s death, a native of El Salvador was arrested. Trump has used this case to support his remarks against immigrants from Central America living in the US.“I do want to say vote for Trump, though, because I really believe that he’s going to close our borders,” said Patty Morin, Rachel’s mother.In his speech, Donald Trump shifted briefly from immigration to the economy.“Your towns, your cities, your country, is being destroyed,” Trump said. “This is bigger than inflation, which is killing you all, caused by Biden and Harris with their stupid energy policy.”He shifted again to making anti-immigrant remarks.“The only things that don’t get obsolete are the wheel and the wall,” he said about the barrier he started to build on the border during his presidency, which increased migrant deaths and devastating injuries.Donald Trump referred to Kamala Harris’s immigrant-focused speech last night in Arizona as “BS”.Fox News broadcasted her remarks, and Trump said “they shouldn’t be allowed to put it on”.“Everything she said is a lie,” the former president said.A video intending to attack Kamala Harris was shown in the middle of Donald Trump’s remarks.The video was a compilation of Harris’s comments about immigration policy.“She is a disaster, and she’s not going to ever do anything for the border,” he said after the video. “She’s incompetent and a bad person.”“She’s a Marxist,” he added.Donald Trump struggled to pronounce “Prairie du Chien”, the name of the town where he’s delivering his remarks.“You could have given me a little easier name than that, but I think we got it right,” Trump said.He continued to make anti-immigrant and racist comments half an hour into his speech.Donald Trump wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”.“There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation right through your border, no matter what lies she tells,” Trump said.“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border, and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States and Wisconsin,” he added.Donald Trump said Kamala Harris’s border policies should disqualify her from ever becoming president and urged voters in Wisconsin not to support her.“Kamala is mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.”Donald Trump claims that more than 40,000 people were outside, unable to get into the building because the room was at capacity.He then turned to criticize Kamala Harris for her role in border policies, claiming that her actions have led to widespread chaos, suffering, and a lack of national security.“I watched this show that she put on, four years of the most incompetent border anywhere in the world, in history,” Trump said.Donald Trump has taken the stage, starting his speech more than an hour after his scheduled start time in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. More

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      Pennsylvania steel workers, wooed by Harris and Trump, remain skeptical: ‘I don’t trust either one of them’

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      The Monongahela River winds through the tight Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating a main artery in the nation’s industrial heart, where the steel and coal industries have driven the region’s economy and shaped political landscapes since the late 19th century.In the weeks preceding the election, the region is once again playing an outsize role in determining the nation’s political future. A controversial Biden-Harris administration plan to kill Pittsburgh-based US Steel’s proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel is viewed in part as an election-year strategy to shore up critical union support in a must-win swing state.On the ground in and around the city, evidence suggests the move may just work – unions oppose the sale and the administration’s position is at the very least maintaining recent Democratic gains in the tug-of-war for swing voters in the nation’s steel capital.Anecdotal evidence and polling point to Harris gaining momentum here.“I’ve learned not to be comfortable with any election because we didn’t think Trump could win in 16 … but I think people are going to vote more common sense this year,” said Keli Vereb, a steelworker union rep and Lincoln borough council member.Unusually in these fractious times, both presidential candidates oppose the deal, backing United Steelworkers International union members across the political spectrum who are determined to thwart a deal they see as a job killer that puts their pensions at risk.Recent memories of supply chain issues have also hardened US resolve to protect vital industries such as steel.Still, politics are omnipresent, and the deal undoubtedly will play a role in determining the next president. It comes eight years after blue-collar workers here defected from the Democratic party en masse when then candidate Hillary Clinton said during a debate that she would put coalminers out of business.Some union leaders say the comment may have cost her Pennsylvania, which Donald Trump won by 0.7%. After four years of pro-labor policies from Joe Biden, the party has begun to win back some who left, and with Trump proposing to block the US Steel sale if he were elected, Democrats risk a 2016 repeat if it is allowed to proceed.“Trump would pounce on them if they let [the sale] go,” said Allen George, a lifelong Democrat who worked in unions adjacent to the steel industry.The companies are making a powerful argument that the deal is vital to US Steel’s survival. US Steel claims it will be forced to cut Pennsylvania jobs and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh if Biden blocks Nippon’s $14.1bn bid, while it has promised to invest $2.4bn in its facilities if the sale goes through. The company’s “scorched earth” public relations campaign on the factory floors has at least some rank and file supporting the sale, said Bernie Hall, Pennsylvania director for USI.“Some are scared and think: ‘We should just take this and live to fight another day,’ and that’s natural,” Hall said.Many more, however, oppose the sale. The union’s contract is up in 23 months and they fear a Nippon-US Steel would cut jobs, or continue to send them to non-union states. They point to Nippon’s long history of “dumping” steel in the US, which has cratered prices and cost American jobs, and many fear the purchase is a ploy to continue the practice.US Steel’s record of closing factories and failing to keep promises has generated a deep mistrust and disdain for the company, workers told the Guardian on a recent Monday afternoon outside the Harvey Wilner’s pub in West Mifflin, just south of Pittsburgh. They rattled off a list of facilities that have closed over the decades.“Nippon can have at it,” said Barry Fez, who has worked in manufacturing in the region for decades, but, he says, in a few years he expects they will go back on their word.But that sentiment is colliding with Wall Street and Beltway support for the deal. The latter argue that the administration’s protectionist plan would run counter to international trade norms because Japan is an ally and close economic partner.The idea that trade decorum with Japan is more important than Pennsylvania union members’ security drew scoffs from some workers.“And then they’ll wonder why they lost an election,” said Mike Gallagher, a retired union member.‘They lie all the time’Banking legend JP Morgan created US Steel in a mega-merger in 1901. It grew to be the largest US producer, employing more than 340,000 people at its second world war peak. Today, it is a shadow of its former self, has closed many of its Mon Valley facilities, and now employs about 4,000 people, although the company says it indirectly supports 11,000 jobs and generates $3.6bn in economic activity annually.In the face of waning American steel power, the company has looked for a buyer, and many feel a US-Japan alliance makes sense in countering increasing Chinese domination of the industry.But the union is opposed, and in Pennsylvania, 25% of the electorate is unionized, making it a formidable bloc intensely courted by both political parties.Trump in January said he would stop the deal. Biden has said the same, including in a private meeting with steel workers in April, when the president insisted “US steel will stay US-owned”, according to Don Furko, president of Local 1557 in Clairton. “He said he ‘guarantees’ it.”The administration’s decision on whether the deal should be blocked largely lies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is made up of Biden’s cabinet members and other appointees. It can veto mergers and acquisitions it finds present a national security risk.CFIUS was expected to issue an opinion on 21 September, but the administration punted until after the election. Union members say they aren’t worried.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been pretty clear and they will follow through,” Hall said.Harris has got the message: “US Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” she told a rally in Pittsburgh earlier this month.David Burritt, the CEO of US Steel, has warned of consequences if the deal is blocked. He says the company would “largely pivot away” from its blast furnace production in the region, and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh.“We want elected leaders and other key decision makers to recognize the benefits of the deal as well as the unavoidable consequences if the deal fails,” Burritt said last month.That threat has further inflamed tensions. Furko said it reminds him of his young son flipping over the Monopoly board when he loses: “That’s really what’s going on here – if this deal doesn’t go through, then they’re going to flip over the Monopoly board.”Asked about US Steel’s claims that it will revitalize the region if the sale goes through, workers told the Guardian that there are no guarantees that the investment will be in Mon Valley. People would be “foolish” to believe that, Vereb said.That was echoed outside the Wilner’s pub. Fez recalled the pub’s heyday, when “you couldn’t get in there at 7am because it was so packed”, and the floor was littered with quarter wrappers from the slot machines.On a Monday afternoon around shift change time, a group of about a dozen retirees sat around the bar. They blamed US Steel for the region’s slowdown, and while they say they do not expect Biden or Trump to save the city, they have even less confidence that US Steel and a Japanese company will turn it around.“They lie all the time, and I don’t trust either one of them,” said Jack, a retiree who worked for US Steel for more than 30 years, who declined to use his last name.‘He gets credit for that’The political price that the Biden-Harris administration could pay for allowing the deal to go through can be seen in the 2016 election’s wake.Before 2016, the region was largely Democratic. But when Clinton made the comment about the clean energy industry putting coalminers and barons out of business, “Things turned on a dime,” Vereb said. Her borough of 900 was once about 80% Democrats. It’s now about 75% Republican, she estimates.About 75% of those working at US Steel’s Clairton Mill Works, several union leaders estimate, support Trump, and there is little Democrats can do to win back many of them.The situation is also complicated by US Steel’s intense campaign to convince workers that the sale will save their jobs. The company sends regular emails, holds meetings, takes out ads in newspapers and makes their case to reporters.“They say: ‘If you don’t support us, then we’re gonna shut this place down, and if that happens you can thank your union leadership,’” said Rob Hutchison, president of Local 1219. “When [rank and file] have that threat in their face eight to 12 hours per day, then it starts to become something they think about.”That also presents another political risk: if the Biden-Harris administration were to block the deal, and US Steel shuts down a plant, Democrats may again lose some voters.However, so far, the controversial move seems to be paying dividends.“I don’t know if the average Joe is thinking about CFIUS or is that in the weeds, but I think from a macro level, people see it, that it’s Biden supporting the union workers, and he gets credit for that,” Hall said. More

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      It’s not just Trump v Harris: America’s men and women are also locked in battle now | Jonathan Freedland

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      I hesitate to give JD Vance any ideas, but if American women were denied the vote, Donald Trump would be restored to the White House in a landslide. Similarly, if men were removed from the franchise, Kamala Harris would be swept into the Oval Office in an even bigger earthquake. As it is, the two are clashing in an election marked by a gulf so wide, the phrase “gender gap” doesn’t do it justice. In ways that go deeper than mere politics, and with implications for the world beyond the US, the presidential election is increasingly looking like a war between men and women.The numbers are stunning. An NBC poll this week found men favour Trump over Harris by 12 points, 52% to 40%. Among women, Harris leads Trump by 21 points: 58% to 37%. Put the two together and you have a gender chasm of 33 points. Men may not be from Mars and women may not be from Venus, but when it comes to choosing a US president, they are on different planets.What explains it? The most obvious answer is that Trump’s record, including a court ruling that he had committed rape and his own admission of serial sexual assault, boasting that he grabbed women “by the pussy”, makes him repellent to tens of millions of women, none of that reduced by appointing a sidekick who speaks of “childless cat ladies”. Similar explanatory power attaches to the 2022 decision by the supreme court, in the Dobbs case, to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion. Since then, it’s been up to the 50 states whether to grant or withhold that right from women, and 22 of them have chosen to deny it. That shift is on Trump, who nominated three of the six supreme court judges who made the Dobbs decision, an achievement of which he has said he is “proud”.But while the move delighted Trump’s evangelical Christian supporters, it has cost him dear. Dobbs did not just anger American women, it mobilised them. In the midterm elections of 2022, as high inflation fuelled disaffection with Joe Biden, Republicans assumed they would ride a “red wave” to victory. That wave never came, in part because women, furious at the court’s ruling and Republicans’ part in it, turned out in big numbers to vote against them. And while Biden has never been fully comfortable speaking about abortion, Dobbs is widely regarded as the moment Harris found her voice as a national figure.Still, the long-running battle over abortion rights only explains one side of the gender divide. Less obvious is that, as much as women are pulling away from Trump, large numbers of men, especially young men, are drawn towards him.Here, the numbers are even more striking. Attitude surveys show that women between the ages of 18 and 29 are the most progressive group in US history. Meanwhile, a majority of men the same age back Donald Trump. A poll of six battleground states last month found among gen Z voters a gender gulf of 51 points.Part of it is explained by Trump’s trade in swaggering machismo, offering a kind of cartoonish manliness. In recent months that part of his act has only got louder. His supporters always wore T-shirts showing Trump’s face superimposed on a ripped, Rambo-style body, but now they have the image of his bloodied face, fist pumped in the air, seconds after the assassination attempt on him in July, as he urged his followers to “Fight, fight, fight!”There is nothing subtle about this. At his party convention in Milwaukee he was introduced by wrestler Hulk Hogan and the man behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Bear in mind that one study of young people around the world found that while young women were most concerned about issues such as “sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse and mental health”, young men were more focused on “competition, bravery, and honour”.In his own crude way, Trump speaks to that. I saw it for myself earlier this year in New Hampshire, where I encountered young male voters proudly declaring they were voting for “Donald J Trump”, all but saluting as they pronounced that middle initial.The performative masculinity includes a strong element of defiance. Trump’s disregard for the norms and etiquette that govern most politicians shows a contempt for strictures that are seen as constraining men in particular. When he breaks the rules, it’s often men who cheer because they feel those rules shackle them too – and they’re sick of being told off. As one 20-year-old Trump voter complained to the New York Times, US society no longer “lets boys be boys”. As he put it: “Men my age, from a very young age we were told, ‘You’re not supposed to do this, you’re not supposed to do that, you’re just supposed to sit here and be quiet.’” Trump is anything but quiet.Running alongside all this is the strong conviction that increased diversity and advances for women pose a threat to men. A third of men who back Trump believe that gains for women have come at men’s expense, a figure that rises to 40% among men under-50 who support the former president. This resentment surfaces in the casual misogyny that is a Trump tic, and which informs the “manosphere” that he is doing so much to cultivate: the realm of podcasters and social media influencers that delights in a blend of old school sexism and mocking humour that fits Trump perfectly.Toxic as those voices might be, they succeed because the resentment they feed on is real. If plenty of young American men feel they’re getting left behind, that’s because on multiple key measures they are. As the scholar Richard Reeves has set out, American boys are trailing behind girls whether in readiness to start elementary school or graduation from university. Men have lost their place as the default family breadwinner, and watched as many of the jobs they once regarded as their own, including manual work requiring no degree, have vanished. When it comes to finding a partner, or even just having friends, men lag behind.These are trends affecting all men, which might help explain why Trump has made unexpected inroads not only with non-graduate white men, but also with men of colour, especially the young in both groups. They feel beleaguered – and see in Trump someone who sees them.Now, there’s a good chance that the gender chasm will ultimately help Harris. Women tend to vote in greater numbers than men, and they’re with her. But polls have a habit of underestimating Trump and there could be an army of young men, out of pollsters’ reach, who feel that a woman in the Oval Office would be one feminist advance too many. The Taylor Swift endorsement is welcome, but the Harris campaign could do with a thumbs-up from someone with serious influence over young men. It doesn’t help that the “who we serve” page of the Democrats’ own website features a long list of groups, including women, but makes no equivalent offer to men.I don’t expect any of this came up when Keir Starmer met Trump this week, but there is a warning here that should sound far beyond America’s shores. As one US thinktank puts it: “History is littered with examples of nations suffering from the consequences of young men finding themselves idle without purpose.” The gender gap is becoming dangerously wide. It must not become an abyss.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Newsmax and Smartmatic settle 2020 US election defamation lawsuit

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      The voting machine company Smartmatic and the conservative outlet Newsmax have settled a closely watched defamation lawsuit days before it was set to go to trial in Delaware.A spokesman for the Delaware courts said the case had been settled on Thursday. He did not offer additional details. The trial was set to begin in Wilmington on Monday.The terms of the settlement are not public.“Newsmax is pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement,” Bill Daddi, a spokesman for the network, said in a statement.After the 2020 election, Newsmax aired several false claims about the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. The network repeatedly aired false claims from Trump allies that the software was widely used across the country and that it had been hacked to change votes.Smartmatic sued Newsmax, Fox, One America News Network (OANN) and others for broadcasting their false claims. It settled the case with OANN earlier this year and the Fox case is still pending in New York.Smartmatic said in a statement: “We are very pleased to have secured the completion of the case against Newsmax. We are now looking forward to our court day against Fox Corp and Fox News for their disinformation campaign. Lying to the American people has consequences. Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”First amendment scholars were closely watching the case and several others like it to see whether libel law can be used as an effective tool to police misinformation.The case was set to be a kind of sequel to the defamation litigation between Dominion, another voting machine company, and Fox over 2020 election lies. That case was settled just before the trial was set to begin, with Fox agreeing to pay Dominion $787.5m. Eric Davis, the judge who oversaw the Fox case, was also overseeing the Newsmax case.A settlement was not surprising in the case as trial neared. Davis ruled that Smartmatic could not seek punitive damages, a decision that significantly limited any possible financial payout for Smartmatic.Davis had also ruled that Newsmax could use the “neutral report privilege” as a defense in the case – a legal shield that allows media outlets to broadcast allegations if they are reporting on a newsworthy event and do so in a disinterested and neutral way. Davis had not let Fox used that defense in its litigation.Smartmatic executives were indicted by the justice department earlier this year on bribery charges in the Philippines. Even though the charges were completely unrelated to the 2020 election, it offered an opportunity for Newsmax lawyers to argue that the company’s poor reputation could not be attributed to what was said on its air.But Newsmax also had reasons to settle. In a pre-trial conference, a lawyer for the company had called it a “bet-your-company” case for the outlet. Newsmax, which is projecting $180.5m in revenue this year, saw a surge in audience under the Trump administration and a bump that caught Fox’s attention after the 2020 election as it broadcast false claims about voting.“The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling – truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored,” Jay Wallace, a Fox executive, wrote in an email to a colleague after the 2020 election.Unlike in the Fox and Dominion litigation, only a few details emerged in the case revealing internal discussions at Newsmax as they broadcast false claims about the election. One of the messages was an internal letter from Christopher Ruddy, the network’s CEO from November 2020, conceding the network did not have evidence of voter fraud.“Newsmax does not have evidence of widespread voter fraud. We have no evidence of a voter fraud conspiracy nor do we make such claims on Newsmax,” he wrote on 12 November 2020. “We have reported on significant evidence of widespread election irregularities and vote fraud. We will continue to report on that. We believe we should not censor allegations made by the President or his lawyers or surrogates. Our job is not to filter the news but report information and allow Americans to decide.”Another exchange included Bob Sellers, a Newsmax host, and a producer, wondering how long they would have to air false claims about the election. “How long are we going to have to play along with election fraud?” Sellers wrote on 9 November 2020. “Trump’s MO is always to play victim [] And answer this question. Is there anything at all that could result in another election? The answer is no. and are there enough votes that could be switched or thrown out from fraud or irregularities? No.”The lack of a trial may rob the public of the chance to hear about the state of mind of people who were behind broadcasting election lies, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a first amendment scholar at the University of Utah who has closely followed the defamation cases filed by those harmed by 2020 election lies.Still, she noted that Davis had already ruled that the statements at issue in the case were false, and cautioned against expecting defamation cases to be a cure for misinformation.“Defamation law can declare something a lie, but the question of whether a lie was told is only one of many questions that have to be asked and answered,” she said in an interview earlier this week. “It is a notoriously complex area of law, which means cases can be won or lost on a lot of grounds that have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the statement. And I am not sure that translates well to public discussion.”Lyrissa Lidsky, a media law professor at the University of Florida, also cautioned against expecting libel law to be a cure-all for disinformation.“Defamation law is not a panacea for election misinformation. There’s just no two ways about it,” she said. “It’s just a small piece.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani disbarred in Washington DC over role in Trump election plot

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      Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who built a career as an uncompromising crime-fighter, has been permanently disbarred from practising law in Washington DC in a ruling stemming from his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour.The decision came in the form of a one-page order issued by the US capital’s court of appeal and followed a similar order issued in July in New York, Giuliani’s home state.Unlike that ruling, the decision in Washington was not directly related to his actions in Trump’s election-denying effort but was instead based on his failure to respond to a request that he explain why he should not be subject to the same penalty as meted out in New York.“ORDERED that Rudolph W Giuliani is hereby disbarred from the practice of law in the District of Columbia, nunc pro tunc [a Latin term used in legal parlance to mean retroactive] to August 9, 2021,” Thursday’s appeal court order said.In 2021, the appeals court had suspended Giuliani’s law licence in Washington after being notified of a similar decision in New York.The DC bar’s board of responsibility recommended in 2022 that Giuliani’s law licence be indefinitely revoked after its investigators found him guilty of unethical conduct over inaccurate and unsupported claims he made in testimony to a federal court in Pennsylvania while disputing the 2020 election results.The DC court of appeals order did not hinge on those findings. By contrast, the New York appeals court made similar judgments in issuing its ruling, asserting that Giuliani “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements, some of which were perjurious, to the federal court, state lawmakers, the public … and this Court concerning the 2020 Presidential election”.Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani called the order “an absolute travesty and a total miscarriage of justice”.“Members of the legal community who want to protect the integrity of our justice system should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision,” he said.The order is the latest blow to the standing of a man who was dubbed “America’s mayor” for the leadership role he played in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001, which happened when he was the city’s mayor.Last year, two election workers in Georgia won $148m in damages after he defamed them by accusing them of fraud. A week later he filed for bankruptcy. More

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      Rashida Tlaib was unfairly smeared by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Here’s a handy tip: before you comment on an article, read the whole damn thing. Don’t just read the headline, don’t just read a paragraph someone screenshot and put on social media – read the whole thing. This one weird trick is very helpful when it comes to ensuring you’re not taking something dangerously out of context or just making up facts entirely.This advice isn’t addressed to you, dear reader. I’m sure that you don’t need to be told something so basic. Rather it is addressed to everyone – including some very prominent cable news anchors – who has spent the last few days spreading inflammatory misinformation about the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. It’s addressed to everyone who has falsely and dangerously claimed that Tlaib said that the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, only filed charges against pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan because she is Jewish. Which, if this is what Tlaib actually said, would obviously be an outrageous statement.But here’s what actually happened: on 13 September Tlaib had an interview with Steve Neavling from the Detroit Metro Times where she talked about crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests. In this interview Tlaib criticized Nessel for filing charges against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan when her office hadn’t done the same in relation to other protests. Tlaib said the following:“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest … We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”Nowhere in the interview did Tlaib mention anything about Nessel’s personal identity, but Neavling’s article frames Tlaib’s quote with a sentence explaining “Nessel is the first Jewish person to be elected Attorney General of Michigan.”Neavling has since made clear that sentence was not meant to insinuate Tlaib was talking about Nessel being Jewish when she talked about biases; rather Tlaib was referring to anti-Palestinian attitudes that are pervasive in US institutions. Further on in the original interview, Tlaib also explains what she thinks influenced Nessel’s decision to charge pro-Palestinian protestors, suggesting the attorney general was being pressured by university authorities.Neavling quotes Tlaib as saying the following: “I think people at the University of Michigan put pressure on [Nessel] to do this, and she fell for it … I think President Ono and Board of Regent members were very much heavy-handed in this. It had to come from somewhere.”To recap: absolutely nowhere in the original interview did Tlaib say Nessel charged pro-Palestinian protesters because she’s Jewish. And yet that inflammatory claim has spread dangerously far and wide. On Friday, Nessel herself addressed it in a tweet also referencing a cartoon implying Tlaib was a member of Hezbollah.“Rashida’s religion should not be used in a cartoon to imply that she’s a terrorist. It’s Islamophobic and wrong. Just as Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General. It’s anti-Semitic and wrong,” wrote Nessel on X.From there, the CNN anchor Jake Tapper picked up the smear. In an interview with Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, on Sunday, Tapper said the following:“Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish.”Again, that’s not what Tlaib suggested; it’s a very dangerous contortion of what she said.Still, on Monday, CNN’s Dana Bash continued to advance this narrative. And then, on Tuesday, 21 House Democrats released a statement accusing Nessel’s critics of antisemitism. It didn’t specifically name Tlaib but it was very clear who this statement was directed to.While all this was going on, by the way, Neavling – the guy who interviewed Tlaib in the first place – was desperately trying to correct the narrative. Neavling repeatedly tweeted at Tapper and Bash that they were lying. “Now Dana Bash from CNN is lying about what happened,” Neavling wrote in a tweet on Monday. “US Representative @RashidaTlaib did not say Nessel filed the charges because she’s Jewish. She said there is an anti-Palestinian attitude among many institutions, and most of them are not run by Jewish people.” Neavling has also published a comprehensive factcheck of what happened.Despite this factcheck and repeated requests by Neavling for people to stop “spreading lies”, the people responsible for advancing this false narrative have not adequately walked it back or apologized.Nessel’s office has declined my request to clarify whether or not the attorney general believes Tlaib is antisemitic and what evidence Nessel has for spreading this claim. Instead it provided a statement saying: “Our department is staffed with many experienced, professional prosecutors and any allegation of bias within our agency is baseless and unfortunate.”CNN has also declined to speak on the record about the matter but has emphasized that Tapper said on Monday that he “misspoke” when characterizing Tlaib’s comments. Bash has also clarified that “Tlaib did not reference Nessel’s Jewish identity” but continued to say that “Nessel still says she believes it’s antisemitic.”Admitting to misspeaking just isn’t good enough. CNN has spent days amplifying a news story centered around a fabricated quote. And these smears aren’t just insulting, they put Tlaib in danger. The congresswoman, let me remind you, is the only Palestinian American federal lawmaker and has been the subject of death threats, smears and conspiracies since the start of her political career. She has suffered an immense amount of hate for speaking up about Palestinians and her words have routinely been twisted and taken out of context to paint her in the worst possible light. This latest misinformation campaign is yet more of the same.Of course, what’s happening to Tlaib isn’t unique. Advocating for basic Palestinian human rights has always been billed as somehow “controversial” in the US. Since 7 October, however, speaking up about what many human right experts have termed a “genocide” in Gaza puts you at the risk of losing your job and becoming the subject of smear campaigns. Calling out or protesting against a genocide now seems to be considered a worse crime than committing one.For almost a year now, being a Palestinian in the US has meant waking up every morning to images of children in Gaza who have been dismembered by US-made bombs. It means watching helplessly as Gaza is made completely uninhabitable. It means reading letters from doctors who have been in Gaza talking about treating “pre-teen children who were shot in the head” by Israeli soldiers. It means hearing violent and dehumanizing comments from elected officials like the US House representative Tim Walberg of Michigan, who said Gaza should “be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima”.Palestinians are being starved, displaced and bombed off the face of the earth. And as US politicians and pundits mock our pain and cheerlead our slaughter, they have the temerity to tell Palestinians and our supporters that we’re the hateful ones. As 2,000-pound bombs keep dropping on tent encampments full of starving children, Israel’s apologists have the audacity to tell us that we’re the violent ones.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More