“Travis County sues top Texas officials, accusing them of violating National Voter Registration Act”

NVRA (motor voter), The Voting Wars

Texas Tribune:

Travis County officials sued Attorney General Ken Paxton and Secretary of State Jane Nelson on Tuesday over the state’s attempt to block voter registration efforts ahead of a hotly contested presidential election.

The new federal lawsuit escalates a pre-election war between Republican state officials and Democratic urban county leaders over voter registration efforts and accuses Texas officials of violating the National Voter Registration Act. Developments in the ongoing battle continue unfolding as the Oct. 7 deadline to sign up to vote looms….

The federal suit is in response to Paxton turning to state courts to try and block the county from mailing out voter registration applications to people identified as eligible voters who aren’t currently on the rolls. Travis County is home to Austin and has long been a Democratic stronghold in the state.

Paxton’s lawsuit argued that the Texas Election Code did not grant a county officials the ability to collect information about private citizens to convince them to vote and claimed that such an effort is illegal. But Democrats, local leaders and election experts disagree with Paxton’s interpretation of state law.

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“Trump Tries to Close Off a Chief Line of Attack: That He’s a Danger to Democracy”

Uncategorized

NYT:

For months, Donald J. Trump and his allies have described a nation facing almost unthinkable darkness.

The United States is under “under invasion” from “thousands and thousands and thousands of terrorists,” Mr. Trump told thousands at a rally on Friday in Las Vegas. Babies are being “executed after birth.” America faces the prospect of a “nuclear holocaust.”

Three days later, after facing his second assassination attempt in two months, Mr. Trump raised what has become an all-too-common American problem: incendiary political speech. But not his — that of his rivals.

“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

His remarks amount to a flip of a well-worn political script. For years, Democrats have argued that Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts, his escalating threats to imprison those he sees as foes, his efforts to overturn the last election he lost, and his refusals to commit to accepting the results of the next one, render him a unique threat to America’s founding ideals. Dire warnings of the dangers of another Trump presidency have been accompanied by an incitement to vote, and defeat the former president at the ballot box.

Now, as part of a continued effort to deny Democrats one of their chief lines of attack against him, Mr. Trump is seeking to blame his opponents for an increasingly volatile political climate that he himself has helped stoke.

“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday.

On Monday, Mr. Trump’s campaign circulated quotes from President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats calling Mr. Trump “a threat” to democracy, fundamental freedoms and the nation. The list included the one perhaps most often cited by Republicans — “It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye” — which was said by Mr. Biden. The president, after the first attempt on Mr. Trump’s life, has said using that language was “a mistake.”

The attack isn’t new. Since the start of the campaign, Mr. Trump has argued that Democrats represent the true menace to democracy. He has accused Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris of weaponizing the legal system against him — Mr. Trump has been indicted in four criminal cases and found guilty on 34 counts — to portray those prosecutions as a political persecution.

At the same time, he has stood by his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and has called for those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — an attack that he is accused of inciting — to be released, casting them as “hostages” and “political prisoners.”

Such methods are part of a signature playbook Mr. Trump returns to when he is accused of wrongdoing: He accuses his opponent of the exact same thing….

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CA: “Gavin Newsom signs election ‘deepfake’ ban in rebuke to Elon Musk” (I Think It’s Likely Unconstitutional)

cheap speech

Politico:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the country’s toughest law banning digitally altered political “deepfakes” on Tuesday, following through on a vow to act after rebuking Elon Musk for sharing a doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The new California law — which will take effect before the November election — channels rising alarm about artificial intelligence’s capacity to disrupt elections by sowing misinformation, with voters increasingly confronted with deepfake images and audio impersonating candidates. Musk, who owns X, stoked that debate when he shared the AI-altered video of Harris in July, drawing Newsom’s public promise to prohibit similar practices.

I have strong concerns that this law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. (In my book Cheap Speech, I talk about laws that require labeling of deepfakes that I do believe are consistent with the First Amendment, but this law does not follow my suggested model and requires government officials to decide what “parody” or “satire” is.)

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