“Judge deals blow to Arizona case over 2020 Republican electors”

election subversion risk, electoral college

WaPo:

An Arizona judge has ordered state prosecutors to send back to a grand jury a case in which Republicans were charged last year for their alleged roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election, potentially jeopardizing the high-profile indictments.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam J. Myers sided with the Republicans and found that prosecutors failed to provide the grand jury with the text of an 1887 federal law that is central to the Republicans’ defense. The law, known as the Electoral Count Act, spells out how presidential electoral votes are to be cast and counted.

“We are extremely pleased with the court’s ruling, and we think the judge got it exactly right,” said Stephen Binhak, the attorney who spearheaded the effort to get the case back to a grand jury.

The decision is a major setback for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who promised to appeal the ruling so she could keep the prosecution going….

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“New standards for Oklahoma high school students promote misinformation about the 2020 election”

authoritarian threats in US, fraudulent fraud squad

AP:

Oklahoma high school students studying U.S. history learn about the Industrial Revolution, women’s suffrage and America’s expanding role in international affairs.

Beginning next school year, they will add conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

Oklahoma’s new social studies standards for K-12 public school students, already infused with references to the Bible and national pride, were revised at the direction of state School Superintendent Ryan Walters. The Republican official has spent much of his first term in office lauding President Donald Trump, feuding with teachers unions and local school superintendents, and trying to end what he describes as “wokeness” in public schools.

“The left has been pushing left-wing indoctrination in the classroom,” Walters said. “We’re moving it back to actually understanding history … and I’m unapologetic about that.”

The previous standard for studying the 2020 election merely said, “Examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new version is more expansive: “Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”

The new standard raised red flags even among Walters’ fellow Republicans, including the governor and legislative leaders. They were concerned that several last-minute changes, including the language about the 2020 election and a provision stating the source of the COVID-19 virus was a Chinese lab, were added just hours before the state school board voted on them.

A group of parents and educators have filed a lawsuit asking a judge to reject the standards, arguing they were not reviewed properly and that they “represent a distorted view of social studies that intentionally favors an outdated and blatantly biased perspective.”…

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“Scorn in the USA: Trump wants probe into celeb endorsements as Springsteen needles president”

Uncategorized

Politico:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s revenge campaign is continuing apace, with celebrities who backed his 2024 election opponent Kamala Harris now in his sights.

The Republican leader launched a blistering tirade against legendary rocker Bruce Springsteen last week, calling him “not a talented guy” and attacking his physical appearance, after the New Jersey icon — who endorsed Harris last year — branded the Trump administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” during a concert in England.

Now Trump is demanding a “major investigation” into Harris’ lengthy list of celebrity endorsements, singling out Springsteen as well as Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Bono, and claiming they were illegally compensated.

“Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment,” Trump fumed in a caps lock-heavy screed on social media in the early hours of Monday.

“This was a very expensive and desperate effort to artificially build up her sparse crowds. IT’S NOT LEGAL!” he added, calling the various artists who came out in support of Harris “unpatriotic.”

Just bizarre.

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“The Coalition That Powered Trump to Victory in 2024 Is Starting to Fray”

Uncategorized

WSJ:

President Trump’s victory in 2024 not only put a Republican in the White House but gave the party hope that its appeal was attracting new groups of voters. Trump drew unexpectedly large shares of young voters and Black and Latino voters—groups that had largely resisted the GOP.

After broadening the Republican coalition, Trump is at risk of shrinking it. Trump came close to winning young voters—those under age 30—in 2024, a sharp reversal from his 25-point loss among young voters in 2020. He also made gains among Black, Hispanic and other minority groups, losing by a far smaller margin than in 2020. And he improved his showing among seniors.

Now that he is back in the White House, these groups have grown increasingly unhappy with his job performance….

Trump’s improvement among young voters, those under age 30, was one of the noteworthy developments in the election. He lost among such voters by only 4 percentage points, a large survey of the electorate called AP VoteCast found. Now, disapproval outweighs approval by 10 points and even more than 20 points among young people….

Similarly, voters who are Black or Latino, and those from minority groups overall, give increasingly negative assessments of the president’s performance…

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“How the Indian Media Amplified Falsehoods in the Drumbeat of War”

cheap speech, comparative election law

NYT:

The news reports chronicled India’s overwhelming successes: Indian attacks had struck a Pakistani nuclear base, downed two Pakistani fighter jets and blasted part of Pakistan’s Karachi port, the country’s oil and trade lifeline.

Each piece of information was highly specific, but none of it was true.

Disinformation on social media in the days during and since India and Pakistan’s intense military confrontation last week has been overwhelming. Sifting fact from fiction has been nearly impossible on both sides of the border because of the sheer volume of falsehoods, half-truths, memes, misleading video footage and speeches manipulated by artificial intelligence.

But some of that flood also made its way into the mainstream media, a development that alarmed analysts monitoring the evolution of outlets in India once trusted for their independence. The race to break news and a jingoistic approach to reporting reached a fever pitch during the four-day conflict, as anchors and commentators became cheerleaders for war between two nuclear-armed states. Some well-known TV networks aired unverified information or even fabricated stories amid the burst of nationalistic fervor.

And news outlets reported on a supposed strike on a Pakistani nuclear base that was rumored to have caused radiation leaks. They shared detailed maps that purported to show where the strikes had been. But there was no evidence to uphold these claims. The story of the Indian Navy attacking Karachi was also widely circulated. It has since been discredited.

“When we think of misinformation, we think of anonymous people, of bots online, where you never know what the source of the thing is,” said Sumitra Badrinathan, an assistant professor of political science at American University who studies misinformation in South Asia. Social media platforms were also rife with misinformation during India’s 2019 conflict with Pakistan, but what was notable this time, Dr. Badrinathan said, was that “previously credible journalists and major media news outlets ran straight-up fabricated stories.”

“When previously trusted sources become disinformation outlets, it’s a really large problem,” she said.

The misinformation shared on mainstream media platforms about the conflict between India and Pakistan is the latest blow to what was once a vibrant journalism scene in India….

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“With Comey questioning, the Trump administration again targets speech”

Uncategorized

WaPo:

After James B. Comey posted a photograph of shells on a beach arranged to spell “86 47” — a reference to President Donald Trump, the 47th president — the former FBI director said he believed the image was a political message.

But Trump administration officials quickly accused Comey of something much more serious, saying he had committed a crime and should be jailed.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, who oversees the Secret Service, described the post on Thursday as a “threat” and a call to assassinate Trump. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said on Fox News that Comey should be put behind bars. By Friday, the Secret Service had launched an investigation and interviewed Comey in D.C. FBI Director Kash Patel said his agency would “provide all necessary support” as part of the investigation.

Legal experts said in interviews that they doubted Comey’s post would qualify as a genuine threat. Instead, they said, the incident appeared to mark the latest attempt by an administration with a maximalist view of executive power to criminalize or otherwise punish people for speech, protests and other actions traditionally viewed as legally protected in the United States….

Legal analysts and political observers said the focus on speech is meant to intimidate critics and exact political retribution.

“The threat of being investigated is enough to silence many people,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. “The pattern we’re seeing is state power being directed against Trump’s enemies and opponents.”…

What is known as “a true threat is typically defined as a serious expression of an intent to harm another,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William & Mary Law School and an expert in the First Amendment.

But threats can be murky, Zick said. “The harder cases are the ones that fall into this question of, is this just a form of political rhetoric?” he said. “Is this just a person blowing off steam? Are they making a joke?”

Comey’s post “does not read as a true threat to me,” Zick said, though he noted that anything even perceived as threatening to a president can draw Secret Service attention.

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted what is known as a “recklessness” standard for threat cases. True threats of violence are not protected speech under the First Amendment, the court said. But the court ruled that prosecutors must show a defendant acted recklessly and “disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.” Otherwise, the court said, law enforcement could have a chilling effect on nonthreatening speech….

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