Tag Archives: Misinformation

“Elon Musk PAC being investigated by Michigan secretary of state for potential violations”

New development in the story Spencer Overton posted about how Musk’s pro-Trump PAC is funding efforts to redirect voters in swing states away from official voter registration sites, while leaving them with the false impression that they have registered to vote. The effort also collects a host of private information.

Michigan’s Secretary of State has now launched an investigation, according to Brian Schwartz at CNBC. It is not entirely clear whether state law currently prohibits such misdirection and voter suppression.

Share this:

“DeSantis wanted to rewrite press laws. Conservative media helped kill the effort.”

Recent years have seen an uptick in people worried that the standard set for defamation in New York Times v. Sullivan is too high. The decision, it is said with a good deal of truth, fosters reckless journalism and the dissemination of falsehoods. This Washington Post article on a recently defeated Florida bill to address these concerns statutorily might give some critics (myself included) pause. The defeated bill would have taken two significant steps toward making defamation suits easier to bring. First, it sought to narrow who qualifies as “a public figure” thereby granting more people a plausible path to a successful defamation case including against the press. Second, and perhaps more shockingly, it created a presumption that anonymous sources were false.

Share this: