Bloomberg: President Donald Trump has discussed spending as much as $100 million of his own money on his re-election campaign, if necessary, to beat Democratic nominee Joe Biden, according to people familiar with the matter.The billionaire president has talked about … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaigns
NYT: Five months later, Mr. Trump’s financial supremacy has evaporated. Of the $1.1 billon his campaign and the party raised from the beginning of 2019 through July, more than $800 million has already been spent. Now some people inside the … Continue reading
WaPo: For President Trump and his allies, it was a week spent spreading doctored and misleading videos.On Aug. 30, the president retweeted footage of a Black man violently pushing a White woman on a subway platform under the caption, “Black Lives Matter/Antifa” — … Continue reading
CNN: An Ohio-based political advocacy group that shares a Republican-allied law firm with Kanye West’s political campaign is sending unsolicited mail-in ballot applications containing misinformation on Democratic candidates to voters in Pennsylvania and Minnesota — both key battleground states for the 2020 election.Common … Continue reading
CNN: In an attempt to combat efforts to undermine the US presidential election in November, Facebook on Thursday took several steps it says will address concerns about election interference on its platform.But Facebook will continue to allow politicians to run lies in ads through … Continue reading
ABC News: In early July the Department of Homeland Security withheld publication of an intelligence bulletin warning law enforcement agencies of a Russian scheme to promote “allegations about the poor mental health” of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to internal emails … Continue reading
Politico: Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee reported raising a record $365 million in August, surprising even seasoned party fundraisers and putting to rest fears that President Trump would drown him in campaign spending.The staggering cash coincides with Biden … Continue reading
New report from CAP. … Continue reading
New Brennan Center report. … Continue reading
You can find the complaint at this link. As Ben Jacobs noted the other day, this may be the first time a candidate for President has been sued by one of the candidate’s purported presidential electors. … Continue reading
WaPo: Attorney General William P. Barr imposed new rules Tuesday tightening the use of government surveillance on political candidates or their staffers — a move likely to cheer conservatives who have long criticized how the FBI investigated the Trump campaign … Continue reading
WaPo: Google has declined to remove ads from a shadowy group echoing President Trump’s misleading claim that there is a meaningful difference between voting by mail and absentee voting.Google took five days to reach its decision to leave the ads in … Continue reading
Kevin Roose for the NYT: Listen, liberals. If you don’t think Donald Trump can get re-elected in November, you need to spend more time on Facebook.Since the 2016 election, I’ve been obsessively tracking how partisan political content is performing on … Continue reading
NBC News: Twitter has taken action to stop a spam operation that pushed messages from fake accounts about Black people abandoning the Democratic Party.The company removed two fake accounts and deleted the account of a San Diego man who spammed … Continue reading
Detroit News: Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is warning Detroit voters of a “racially charged” and false robocall that appears to be discouraging mail-in voting ahead of the November election. The recording tells voters that their personal information will be part … Continue reading
Can’t wait to dig into this volume edited by Nate Persily and Joshua Tucker, with free access from Cambridge. Thanks Cambridge! … Continue reading
WaPo: A prominent Washington-based conservative advocacy organization is promoting a deceptive digital ad campaign that is stoking fears about mail-in voting and targeting battleground states with high concentrations of minority voters.FreedomWorks, the tax-exempt nonprofit that helped launchtea-partyprotests a decade ago … Continue reading
NYT: More than 200 pages into a sprawling, 1,000-page report on Russian election interference, the Senate Intelligence Committee made a startling conclusion endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats: Donald J. Trump knew of and discussed stolen Democratic emails at critical points late … Continue reading
NBC News: In a thousand-page bipartisan report released Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee said the Trump administration obstructed its investigation with “novel claims” of executive privilege. It painted a portrait of a Trump campaign eager to accept help from a … Continue reading
Foreign Policy: Authoritarian regimes including Russia and China have spent more than $300 million over the past decade to interfere in political processes of dozens of other countries around the world, according to a new report released Tuesday by the German Marshall … Continue reading
NYT: Mr. Trump is hardly lacking for cash; he has received huge numbers of small donations online from a fervent grass-roots base, and he raised a jaw-dropping $165 million in July for his campaign and the two fund-raising committees that he shares with the … Continue reading
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about whether Kanye West, who is running for President and getting on the ballots in at least a few states, is somehow breaking campaign finance law by doing so given the possibility that … Continue reading
WaPo: The Pinocchio Test Two of these photos fall under the category of “doctored” in the Fact Checker’s Guide to Manipulated Video. In the most egregious case, one image literally takes Biden from a nature preserve and puts him in a … Continue reading
Forbes: Amid various reports that Republican and Trump-affiliated political operatives are trying to get Kanye West onto various state ballots for November’s presidential election, the billionaire rap superstar indicated, in an interview by text today, that he was in fact running to … Continue reading
CNN: Republican operatives, some with ties to President Donald Trump, are actively helping Kanye West get on presidential general election ballots in states ranging from Vermont to Arkansas to Wisconsin.The effort is raising questions about whether Republicans are pushing for the … Continue reading
Buzzfeed: For at least the last two months, a key Instagram feature, which algorithmically pushes users toward supposedly related content, has been treating hashtags associated with President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in very different ways. … Continue reading
Tennessean: A group that wanted to skewer a Tennessee state representative as “literally Hitler” in a mailer has successfully challenged a law that blocked false speech, including satire, against candidates in campaign literature.Tennesseans for Sensible Election Laws created a mailer that lambasted Rep. Bruce Griffey, … Continue reading
CNN reports. … Continue reading
WSJ reports. … Continue reading
NYT: American intelligence officials issued a public warning on Friday that China was “expanding its influence efforts” in the United States ahead of the presidential election, along with Russia and Iran, but Democrats briefed on the matter said the threat … Continue reading
CNN: After President Donald Trump posted an unfounded claim to Facebook (FB) on Tuesday that mail-in voting could lead to a “corrupt election,” the social network slapped a label on it. But the label did not attempt to fact-check the post as true … Continue reading
NYT Dealbook: Walmart calls its employees “heroes” for putting their health at risk to work during the pandemic. AT&T champions L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Microsoft is undertaking one of the country’s most ambitious corporate efforts to eliminate its carbon emissions.At a time when Corporate America is … Continue reading
Transcript of interview with Chris Wallace: WALLACE: Two–TRUMP: That’s going to happen here–WALLACE: Two final questions—TRUMP: If he wins–WALLACE: In general, not talking about November, are you a good loser?TRUMP: I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose. … Continue reading
Politico: A Senate committee released declassified documents Friday suggesting that senior FBI officials were initially skeptical of the emerging narrative early in Donald Trump’s presidency that his campaign was in contact with Russian intelligence officers.The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by … Continue reading
NYT: It was about 4 in the afternoon on Wednesday on the East Coast when chaos struck online. Dozens of the biggest names in America — including Joseph R. Biden Jr., Barack Obama, Kanye West, Bill Gates and Elon Musk … Continue reading
KC Star: Kansas Rep. Steve Watkins was charged Tuesday with three felonies and a misdemeanor related to an investigation into whether he illegally voted in a 2019 municipal election.Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay, a Republican, announced the charges about … Continue reading
Politico: The articles and Facebook ad dollars look like the efforts of a run-of-the-mill political group. But they are actually from a news outlet: CourierNewsroom.com, also known as Courier, which was created and funded by the Democratic-aligned digital organization Acronym. … Continue reading
NYT: A Republican Senate candidate recently declared herself “one of the thousands of digital soldiers” in service of QAnon, a convoluted pro-Trump conspiracy theory about a “deep state” of child-molesting Satanist traitors plotting against the president. A congressional candidate in Colorado who made … Continue reading
Details: TopicPandemic Propaganda: A New Electoral CrisisDescriptionHow will the misinformation pandemic inflamed by the coronavirus crisis reshape the political landscape? And how might domestic and foreign actors weaponize rumors, conspiracy theories, and disinformation about Covid-19 against American voters in the … Continue reading
CNN: An anonymous group with ties to Republicans has just emerged with the apparent aim of targeting Senate candidate Kris Kobach of Kansas, according to sources familiar with the effort.Kobach is an anti-immigration firebrand and voter-fraud crusader whose primary campaign has … Continue reading
Important piece: Under pressure to combat the disinformation that politicians — most notably the president of the United States — are spreading on its platforms, Facebook recently announced a new effort to combat lies geared in particular toward misleading Americans about voting.Disinformation … Continue reading
NYT: Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party outraised President Trump and the Republicans for the second straight month in June, announcing a record haul of $141 million on Wednesday night only hours after Mr. Trump’s campaign had trumpeted his … Continue reading
WaPo: Last week, a Ukrainian lawmaker who was once affiliated with a pro-Russian political party and has met with Giuliani released 10 edited snippets of what appeared to be Biden’s official vice presidential phone calls in 2016 with Petro Poroshenko, then … Continue reading
CNN: The Senate will incorporate the annual intelligence policy legislation into the National Defense Authorization Act — but only after stripping language from the intelligence bill that would have required presidential campaigns to report offers of foreign election help.Sen. Mark … Continue reading
OC Register: As she heads into the heart of her first re-election campaign, Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine is quickly becoming a power broker in the House of Representatives.She’s a Democrat in a flip district that still leans slightly red. But … Continue reading
Release: Today, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California settled a lawsuit with Fresno County over the chief elections official’s removal of a polling place at Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno – all because the church refused to cover up Black Lives Matter … Continue reading
WaPo: Facebook on Thursday deactivated dozens of ads placed by President Trump’s reelection campaign that included a symbol once used by the Nazis to designate political prisoners in concentration camps.The marking appeared as part of the campaign’s online salvo against antifa and … Continue reading
The Atlantic: In what appears to be a signal of intensifying political warfare ahead of the November election, One America News Network, the Trump-supporting cable channel that has been promoting anti-Biden conspiracies for several months, says it has obtained several hours of … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump has relentlessly attacked mail voting, calling it a free-for-all for cheating and a Democratic scheme to rig elections.None of the charges are true.But as eight states and the District of Columbia vote on Tuesday in the biggest Election Day since … Continue reading