“Trump calls his opponents ‘scum’ and lawbreakers in bellicose speech at Justice Department”

authoritarian threats in US, Department of Justice

Politico:

President Donald Trump on Friday walked into the Department of Justice and labeled his courtroom opponents “scum,” judges “corrupt” and the prosecutors who investigated him “deranged.”

With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called his political opponents lawbreakers and said others should be sent to prison.

“These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” the president said in a rambling speech, during a section when he was condemning both the people who directed the withdrawal from Afghanistan and those he falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election. “The people who did this to us should go to jail.”

In remarks that were by turns dark, exultant and pugnacious, Trump vowed to remake the Justice Department and retaliate against his enemies.

It was, even by Trump’s standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the “chief law enforcement officer in our country” and accused the DOJ’s prior leadership of doing “everything within their power to prevent” him from becoming the president.

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Mar 21 Event from Issue One on CISA and Protecting Federal Elections

election administration

This looks important:

Following unprecedented levels of foreign interference operations during the 2016 presidential election, members of Congress and President Trump’s first administration recognized the urgent need to bolster election security. That collective effort resulted in the Department of Homeland Security designating election systems as critical infrastructure, and President Trump signing into law and establishing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Today, and despite a history of broad bipartisan support since its inception, CISA has been dramatically downsized by the new Trump administration and funding for key cybersecurity initiatives, including the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC) and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), has been halted. This dismantling of CISA leaves our elections vulnerable and impairs a critical partnership between the federal government and state and local election officials that keeps our elections secure and safe.

Join us on Friday, March 21 at 1 pm ET for an important discussion about the role that CISA plays in identifying and mitigating cyber threats and enhancing election security. “Safeguarding Democracy: CISA’s Role in Protecting Elections,” will feature Kim Wyman, former Washington Secretary of State and CISA Senior Election Security Advisor, in conversation with current election officials Rob Rock, Rhode Island Deputy Secretary of State, Wesley Wilcox, Supervisor of Elections in Marion County, Florida, and Julie Wise, Director of Elections in King County, Washington.

The event is presented by Issue One and Issue One’s Faces of Democracy initiative.

Register for the event.

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“Under G.O.P., Congress Cedes Power to Trump, Eroding Its Influence”

authoritarian threats in US, legislation and legislatures

NYT:

The Republican-led Congress isn’t just watching the Trump administration gobble up its constitutional powers. It is enthusiastically turning them over to the White House.

G.O.P. lawmakers are doing so this week by embracing a stopgap spending bill that gives the administration wide discretion over how federal dollars are distributed, in effect handing off the legislative branch’s spending authority to President Trump. But that is just one example of how Congress, under unified Republican control, is proactively relinquishing some of its fundamental and critical authority on oversight, economic issues and more.

As they cleared the way for passing the spending measure on Tuesday, House Republicans leaders also quietly surrendered their chamber’s ability to undo Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China in an effort to shield their members from having to take a politically tough vote. That switched off the only legislative recourse that Congress has to challenge the tariffs that are all but certain to have a major impact on their constituents.

Republicans have also stood by, many of them cheering, as the administration has upended federal departments and programs funded by Congress and fired thousands of workers with no notice to or consultation with the lawmakers charged with overseeing federal agencies. So far, no congressional committee has held an oversight hearing to scrutinize the moves or demand answers that would typically be expected when an administration undertakes such major changes….

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“Who Is Elon Musk Helping Now? A Judicial Candidate Who’s a Big Trump Fan.”

judicial elections

NYT:

In October 2016, the day after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Donald J. Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, Wisconsin Republicans held a rally in the small town of Elkhorn.

As the state’s top Republicans spoke at the event, they distanced themselves from Mr. Trump. Paul D. Ryan, then the House speaker, said he was “sickened.” Gov. Scott Walker declared that Mr. Trump’s remarks were “inexcusable.” Senator Ron Johnson called them “indefensible.”

Just one Republican took the stage, framed by haystacks and pumpkins, and came to Mr. Trump’s defense: Brad Schimel, then the state’s attorney general and now a Waukesha County judge who is running in a high-profile, expensive race for control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

“I know that Donald Trump has said some things that are bad,” Judge Schimel said as a voice in the crowd cried out, “Get over it!” He added: “I’m the father of two daughters. My daughters look up to me, and I don’t like hearing anyone talk that way about women. But Donald Trump will appoint judges who will defend our Constitution and respect our Constitution.”

Now, as Judge Schimel aims to return a conservative majority to the court after Wisconsin liberals flipped it in 2023, he is hoping to sustain the pro-Trump energy that helped the president carry the battleground state last fall.

Following a path blazed by Wisconsin Democrats, who successfully injected national politics into the State Supreme Court election two years ago, Judge Schimel is campaigning for the ostensibly nonpartisan post in an openly partisan way — as an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump.

Judge Schimel has echoed Mr. Trump’s lies about elections, attended his campaign rallies and walked door to door to encourage voters to back him in the April 1 election. Last fall, Judge Schimel wore a Trump-as-garbage-man costume while shaking what appeared to be a pair of maracas and playing bass guitar at a Halloween party, an episode captured on a video obtained by The New York Times. And this month, he told supporters that he wanted to help build “a support network” around Mr. Trump.

“They’re so desperate for him to not get a win that they won’t let America have a win,” Judge Schimel said at an event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action, referring to Democrats and other Trump opponents. “That’s what they’re doing. The only way we’re going to stop that is if the courts stop it.”…

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“Adaptation and Innovation: The Civic Space Response to AI-Infused Elections”

Uncategorized

New report from CDT. From the Introduction:

AI avatars delivered independent news about Venezuela’s contested election, allowing journalists to protect their identity and avoid politically motivated arrest. Voters in the United Kingdom could cast their ballots for an AI avatar to hold a seat in Parliament. A deepfake video showed United States President Joe Biden threatening to impose sanctions on South Africa if the incumbent African National Congress won.

These are a few of the hundreds of ways generative AI was used during elections in 2024, a year that was touted as “the year of elections” and described as the moment in which newly widespread AI tools could do lasting damage to human rights and democracy worldwide. Though technology and security experts have described deepfakes as a threat to elections since at least the mid to late 2010s, the concentrated attention in 2024 was a reaction to the AI boom in the preceding year. In September 2023, a leading parliamentary candidate in Slovakia lost after a fake audio smearing him was released two days before the election, prompting speculation that the deepfake had changed the election results. At the beginning of the year, OpenAI’s ChatGPT set a record as the “fastest-growing consumer application in history.” 

Though 2024 ended with debates over the extent to which the risks AI posed to elections were overstated, in one way the consequences were clear: the technology changed the way stakeholders around the world did their work. Governments from Brazil to the Philippines passed new laws and regulations to govern the use of generative AI in elections. The European Commission published guidelines for how large companies should protect the information environment ahead of the June 2024 elections, including by labeling AI-generated content. US election administrators adopted new communication tactics that were tailored to an AI-infused information environment.

Political campaigns and candidates adopted AI tools to create advertisements and help with voter outreach. Candidates in Indonesia paid for a service that used ChatGPT to write speeches and develop campaign strategies. In India, candidates used deepfake audio and video of themselves to enable more personalized outreach to voters. Germany’s far right AfD party ran anti-immigrant ads on Meta platforms, some of which incorporated AI-altered images.

Social media platforms and AI developers implemented some election integrity programs, despite recent cuts to trust and safety teams. Twenty-seven technology companies signed the AI Elections Accord, a one-year commitment to addressing “deceptive AI election content” through improved detection, provenance, and other efforts. Google restricted the Gemini chatbot’s responses to election-related queries, and OpenAI announced that ChatGPT would redirect users to external sources when users asked about voting ahead of certain elections. Google and Jigsaw worked with media, civil society, and government partners on public media literacy ahead of the European Union elections, including about generative AI. 

In anticipation of AI tools accelerating or increasing threats to the information environment, civic space actors changed their work, too. This report looks at their contributions to a resilient information environment during the 2024 electoral periods through three case studies: (I) fact-checking collectives in Mexico, (II) decentralization and coordination among civil society in Taiwan, and (III) AI incident tracking projects by media, academics, and civil society organizations. 

The case studies highlight a range of approaches to building resilient information environments. They show the ways artificial intelligence complicates that work, as well as how it can be used to support resilience building efforts. The mix of approaches — from fact-checking bots on WhatsApp to cataloging hundreds of deepfakes — tap into information resilience from different angles.

Continue reading “Adaptation and Innovation: The Civic Space Response to AI-Infused Elections” →
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