Tag: 2020 election

Twitter Announces Plan to Label, and Possibly Remove, Deceptive Media From Its Platform

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter will begin to label and in some cases remove doctored or manipulated photos, audio and videos that are designed to mislead people.

The company said Tuesday that the new rules prohibit sharing synthetic or manipulated material that’s likely to cause harm. Material that is manipulated but isn’t necessarily harmful may get a warning label.

Under the new guidelines, the slowed-down video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which she appeared to slur her words could get the label if someone tweets it out after the rules go into effect March 5. Continue reading.

YouTube Says It Will Ban Misleading Election-Related Content

New York Times logoOn the day of the Iowa caucuses, the video platform rolled out a complete policy of how it planned to handle false election content.

BOSTON — YouTube said on Monday that it planned to remove misleading election-related content that can cause “serious risk of egregious harm,” the first time the video platform has comprehensively laid out how it will handle such political videos and viral falsehoods.

The Google-owned site, which previously had several different policies in place that addressed false or misleading content, rolled out the full plan on the day of the Iowa caucuses, when voters will begin to indicate their preferred Democratic presidential candidate.

“Over the last few years, we’ve increased our efforts to make YouTube a more reliable source for news and information, as well as an open platform for healthy political discourse,” Leslie Miller, the vice president of government affairs and public policy at YouTube, said in a blog post. She added that YouTube would be enforcing its policies “without regard to a video’s political viewpoint.” Continue reading.

Slowing economy complicates campaign messaging for Trump

The Hill logoPresident Trump is heading into the 2020 campaign with a resilient economy behind him and new trade deals under his belt, counting on both to help bolster his reelection odds.

But as Trump claims credit for extending the longest-ever stretch of U.S. economic prosperity, recent government figures show he is falling far short of his promise to accelerate the economy.

Trump took office on a pledge to expand gross domestic product (GDP) at least 3 percent a year. And while he came close to that mark in 2018 through tax cuts and higher government spending, growth slowed to 2.3 percent last year, the weakest annual pace since he took office, according to Commerce Department data released Thursday. Continue reading.

Trump slams Democrats in Iowa days before the caucuses

“We are going to defeat the radical socialist Democrats that are right down the street,” Trump said at a rally in Des Moines as his impeachment trial continued.

DES MOINES, Iowa — While the Senate debated his removal from office, President Donald Trump jabbed at his Democratic opponents here as some campaigned to replace him just miles away.

Trump focused most of his attacks on former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — both leading the Democratic presidential pack — while expressing disbelief at his impeachment trial back home.

“We are having probably the best years that we have ever had in the history of our country. And I just got impeached. Can you believe these people? I got impeached. They impeached Trump,” he said. “No, that’s not gonna work. Watch. Just watch.” Continue reading.

RNC will flood battleground states with staffers to boost Trump

The party committee has approved plans to send 300 more field workers to 18 swing states.

The Republican National Committee on Thursday approved plans to dispatch an additional 300 field staffers to 18 target states in this fall’s general election, a move that comes as the Trump political machine ramps up its presence in battlegrounds across the country.

The deployment was confirmed by a party official briefed on the plans. With the new wave, the committee will have over 600 staffers spread out across the nation. Party officials, who noted they had already knocked on a million doors, said the canvassers would be promoting GOP candidates up and down the ballot.

The RNC’s 168 members and its chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel, are gathered in Doral, Fla., for the committee’s annual winter meeting. President Donald Trump is slated to address the group on Thursday evening. Eric Trump, Trump’s son, made an appearance earlier in the day. Continue reading.

NOTE:  Minnesota is included in this strategy.

A Test on the Farm

Minnesota farmers struggling with low prices amid tariffs weigh their support for Trump.

OKABENA, MINNESOTA– The rain came first, drenching the fields and delaying planting. Then 70 mph wind knocked down half their corn. Chinese tariffs sank the price of soybeans. And if that weren’t enough, demand for corn dropped after Washington gave oil refineries a pass on using ethanol.

For Rachel and Lance Daberkow, poor weather compounded by President Donald Trump’s trade and fuel policies has meant cutting costs as income from their 640-acre farm dwindled over the past two years. Like some other growers around Minnesota struggling with an uncertain farm economy, their faith in a president who carried rural America four years ago is being tested.

As the father of two young boys, Lance Daberkow, 37, sees Trump at least trying to resolve long-standing trade problems with China. He believes farmers will benefit long term if Trump is re-elected. Continue reading.

The Trump Campaign is Deplying Phone Location-Tracking Technology

President Donald Trump’s reelection effort has retained the services of a technology company that specializes in the mass collection of smartphone location data, which can be used to track voters for political targeting purposes.

Phunware, an Austin, Texas-based firm, announced the connection in a little-noticed press release in October, touting “new and existing customer wins including American Made Media Consultants,” the consulting firm set up this year by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale to handle advertising services for a variety of official Trump reelection PACs. The release noted that the deal was signed in conjunction with the Trump-Pence 2020 reelection effort.

A growing subset of advertising firms rely on data brokers that use third-party apps — from popular mobile games to apps used for checking the weather, perfecting a selfie, and online banking — to harvest vast troves of information about potential voters. Phunware, in a section of its website, discusses the company’s ability to obtain GPS location data and the Wi-Fi network used by an individual, as well as user data that can infer an “individual’s gender, age, lifestyle preferences” — potential tools for identifying and influencing voters. Continue reading.

The move to replace President Trump starts with early primary voting Friday. Join us.

Minnesotans will be the first in the nation to cast ballots in the primary and, while some are concerned about Democrats coming together, I’m confident we can unite behind a nominee.

In just a few short days, Minnesotans will have the opportunity to help select the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Thanks to our state’s strong early voting laws, Minnesotans will be the first in the nation to cast our ballots in the presidential primary, beginning this Friday.

This is a moment that many people across our state have been eagerly awaiting. I have spoken with countless Minnesotans who are inspired by the strong slate of Democrats running for president. Voters have been waiting for years to pick the next standard-bearer of our party and, hopefully, the leader who will turn the page on these last few embarrassing years of division and chaos. Continue reading “The move to replace President Trump starts with early primary voting Friday. Join us.”

Russians Hacked Ukrainian Gas Company at Center of Impeachment

New York Times logoWith President Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the affair, according to security experts.

The hacking attempts against Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, began in early November, as talk of the Bidens, Ukraine and impeachment was dominating the news in the United States.

It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for. But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment. Continue reading.

Wisconsin judge orders up to 209K voter names be deleted

PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. — A Wisconsin judge on Monday found the state’s bipartisan elections commission to be in contempt and ordered it to immediately begin removing up to 209,000 names from the state’s voter rolls or face fines for each day it doesn’t.

Hours later, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court declined a request from a conservative law firm to immediately hear the case, meaning that the legal battle will now shift to a lower state appeals court and likely not be resolved before the November presidential election.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to get involved now was a win for liberals, who will now attempt to persuade a lower appeals court to put the original ruling on hold while the legal fight continues. The appeals court had refused to act while the Supreme Court was considering what to do. Continue reading.