Monday, January 18, 2021

We Should Be Very Worried About Joe Biden’s “Domestic Terrorism” Bill

Joe Biden used to brag that he practically wrote the Patriot Act, the Bush-era law that massively increased government surveillance powers. Now he’s hoping to pass a further “domestic terrorism” law once in office. The danger is real that the January 6 Capitol attack will be used as an excuse to severely curtail our civil liberties.

Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden speaks to supporters at a campaign event on March 2, 2020 in Houston, Texas. (Callaghan O'Hare / Getty Images)

BY LUKE SAVAGE 01.12.2021


Nearly two decades since its initial passage in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Patriot Act has continued to linger in our collective memory. Though few Americans probably remember much about its provisions or specifics, the Bush-era legislation long ago entered into general usage as an synonym for heavy-handed domestic surveillance and institutional overreach — the words “Patriot Act” now being practically synonymous with secrecy, eavesdropping, and the rolling back of civil liberties under the intentionally broad guise of “national security.”

Given the law’s contents and implications in practice, this reputation is well deserved. Passing the Senate with only a single dissenting vote, the Patriot Act dramatically expanded the power of federal authorities to spy on ordinary Americans with minimal oversight: enabling the FBI to obtain detailed information about citizens’ banking history and personal communications without having to seek judicial approval and even allowing “sneak and peek” searches of homes and offices. “The Patriot Act,” in the rather blunt words of a brief prepared by the ACLU, “[turned] regular citizens into suspects.”

Predictably, a great deal of law enforcement activity resulted from the ludicrously titled law (USA PATRIOT was a backronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”). According to data released by the Department of Justice, the FBI made hundreds of thousands of incursions into personal phone, computer, and financial records in the years immediately following its passage — the utility of these searches in identifying or preventing actual terrorist activities being debatable, to say the least.


Despite passing with widespread support, the Patriot Act was still considered extreme enough for lawmakers to attach sunset clauses to several of its major provisions, guaranteeing their expiry in lieu of congressional renewal (which, incidentally, eventually came under George W. Bush and again under Barack Obama).

One prominent Delaware lawmaker, however, felt it didn’t go far enough.

Ahead of the nearly unanimous October 25, 2001, Senate vote on the Patriot Act, Joe Biden was regularly claiming the law as his own, boasting in an interview with the New Republic: “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill.” Biden wasn’t wrong. In fact, key parts of the Bush administration’s signature national security law were drawn from provisions contained in Biden’s own 1995 anti-terrorism bill. Originally called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, Jacobin’s Branco Marcetic summarized it contents as follows:


The bill made “terrorism” a new federal crime, allowed those charged with terrorism to be automatically detained before trial, outlawed donations to government-designated terrorist groups, allowed electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists, and created a special court to deport noncitizens accused of terrorism (ironically, when Bush had proposed a similar measure years before, Biden had denounced it as “the very antithesis of our legal system”). It also let the government use evidence from secret sources in those trials.

Calling the Patriot Act “measured and prudent” during an approving speech on the Senate floor, Biden would nonetheless lament the removal of sections from his 1995 bill that would have given police even more sweeping powers of surveillance.

This particular episode aside, Biden’s career and voting history suggest a decidedly dodgy record on civil liberties. In 1996, he voted for Bob Dole’s Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act—deemed by legal scholar Lincoln Caplan to be “one of the worst statutes ever passed by Congress” thanks to its undermining of habeas corpus. Though he eventually took to criticizing the administration’s surveillance programs once they became unpopular, Biden’s positions later in the Bush era often earned him only middling ratings from the ACLU.

Given this history, and recent events, Biden’s purported plan to introduce a new domestic terrorism law gives us plenty of reason to worry. As in 2001, the ground currently looks fertile for such legislation to find a big (and potentially bipartisan) constituency even if its contents prove repressive or heavy-handed. The Trump era, with its incessant valorizing of security and intelligence officials and general atmosphere of emergency, has worryingly seemed to lay the groundwork for something resembling a second Patriot Act to find support among liberals — especially if they’re encouraged to believe its sole targets will be figures associated with the likes of QAnon. Against this backdrop, the deep (and understandable) sense of shock in the wake of this month’s Capitol storming will probably act like gasoline poured on an open flame.

However such legislation may be justified with liberal-sounding language, there’s absolutely no reason to believe authorities wouldn’t use new powers to target groups that have nothing to do with Donald Trump or Trumpism. Police almost certainly infiltrated Black Lives Matter protests last summer, and American law enforcement has a long and ignominious history of targeting progressive groups — not to mention socialists, trade unions, and civil rights activists. As this history suggests, the premise behind any new anti-terrorism law will also be wrong on its face: the American state hardly faces excessive restrictions on its capacity to surveil, discipline, and punish. (The FBI, to take an obvious example, already possesses considerable power to investigate groups suspected of extremist activity.)

And, while there is seldom a good time to restrict civil liberties, the aftermath of a bloody riot in the Capitol that raises serious questions about police conduct, and about the presence of far-right forces inside law enforcement, seems like a particularly bad moment to do so.

After the September 11 attacks, Congress hastily approved a sweeping and Orwellian piece of legislation that drew heavily on a bill written by Joe Biden. With Biden about to enter office amid a climate of social instability and deep public anxiety, there’s an all-too-real risk that history will repeat itself.

Luke Savage is a staff writer at Jacobin.

THOUGHTS & PRAYERS
Parler's CEO fled his home and went into hiding after receiving death threats and security breaches, a court filing says



© Fox News Parler CEO John Matze Fox News

Parler CEO John Matze Jr. and his family have fled their homes after receiving death threats, a new court filing says.

Parler was recently removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and Amazon Web Services stopped hosting the platform after it deemed Parler a "risk to public safety."

Trump supporters flocked to the platform after the president was banned from Twitter following the siege at the Capitol on January 6.


Parler CEO John Matze Jr. fled his home receiving death threats, a lawyer for Matze said in a court filing on Friday.

The attorney, David Groesbeck, wrote in the document that Matze had to "go into hiding with his family after receiving death threats and invasive personal security breaches." The filing was part of Parler's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Web Services to put the platform back online.
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The current filing aimed to seal parts of the suit filed as a safety measure.

Read more: Inside the rapid and mysterious rise of Parler, the 'free speech' Twitter alternative, which created a platform for conservatives by burning the Silicon Valley script

Amazon Web Services stopped hosting Parler after it said the platform had violent content that was tied to the January 6 siege at the US Capitol. In its own court filing last week, Amazon alleged that Parler was both unwilling and unable to remove "content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens."

Supporters of President Donald Trump breached the building and clashed with law enforcement, halting the joint session of Congress as lawmakers were debating challenges to electoral votes.

Five people died, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman who was shot by law-enforcement officials while participating in the riot.

Trump's Twitter account was subsequently suspended and conservatives urged their followers to join Parler afterward. The app jumped to No. 1 on Apple's App Store before the company pulled it. Google also yanked Parler from its store.

AWS said Parler "poses a very real risk to public safety," when it stopped hosting it.

In the Friday court filing, Groesbeck didn't specify who was threatening Matze, but said his position "as the CEO of the company AWS continues to vilify," put him in danger.

Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Amazon said Parler users were threatening their staff.

"Both sides of this dispute have shown that their employees have suffered real harassment and threats-including, on both sides, death threats-owing to the charged nature of this litigation," Groesbeck said in his filing.
Read the original article on Business Insider

Omar and Ocasio-Cortez Tell Josh Hawley to 'Resign'—And Poll Shows Majority of Missouri Voters Agree

"While you may politically regret what you've revealed about yourself, you still have no place in public office," Ocasio-Cortez said of Hawley.

Published on Friday, January 15, 2021 
by
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) attends a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) attends a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday implored Republican Sen. Josh Hawley to resign, and a new poll released Thursday shows that a majority of Hawley's constituents in Missouri agree that the lawmaker should quit following his role in inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

According to a survey (pdf) of Missouri voters conducted by Data for Progress and MoveOn, 51% of likely voters in the state—91% of Democrats, 52% of self-identified independents, and 20% of Republicans—believe that Hawley should resign immediately as a consequence for sowing doubt about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Like several additional GOP lawmakers, Hawley has faced criticism for baselessly challenging the legitimacy of President-elect Joe Biden's decisive electoral win, an effort that critics say implicates them in last week's right-wing assault on the halls of Congress.

Since the January 6 insurrection, Hawley has tried to distance himself from the actions of the pro-Trump mob, yet even in the aftermath of the deadly riot, the lawmaker still—alongside 139 House and seven other Senate Republicans—voted against certifying the Electoral College results.

While Hawley has tried to portray his objections to Biden's victory as a principled stance in defense of "election integrity," Rep. Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) reminded the Missouri Republican of the infamous photograph in which Hawley is depicted raising his fist "in solidarity with white supremacists who attacked our Capitol."

"While you may politically regret what you've revealed about yourself," Ocasio-Cortez said, "you still have no place in public office."

'His Conduct Was Seditious': House Democrats From Texas Demand Ted Cruz Be Expelled From Senate

"In his effort to appease Donald Trump and his supporters, Senator Cruz encouraged these terrorists to wage armed insurrection against America."


 Published on Saturday, January 16, 2021 
by
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stands in the House Chamber during a reconvening of a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Members of Congress returned to the House Chamber after being evacuated when protesters stormed the Capitol and disrupted a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stands in the House Chamber during a reconvening of a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Members of Congress returned to the House Chamber after being evacuated when protesters stormed the Capitol and disrupted a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Three House Democrats from Texas have called on party leaders in the U.S. Senate to back the expulsion of a member of their state's congressional delegation, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, for what they term "seditious" behavior related to the insurrectionist mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Signed by Reps. Veronica Escobar, Joaquin Castro, and Sylvia Garcia—all from Texas—a Friday letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (soon to exchange title) argued that it "is evident that Senator Cruz echoed Trump's false voter fraud claims for political gain, going so far as sending a fundraising plea during the armed stand-off in the Capitol where members of Congress, staff, and journalists were held hostage for hours."

In addition to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Cruz led the Republican effort in the Senate to block certification of President-elect Joe Biden's 2020 electoral victory by making baseless claims of voter fraud—the same false claims made by Trump and those in the mob who ransacked the U.S. Capitol in an insurrectionist effort that left five people dead, including one Capitol Police Officer who was murdered.

Cruz's conduct, Escobar said in a tweet that mirrored the letter's message, "was seditious. He must be held accountable and expelled from the Senate."

The letter argues that "Cruz's objection to the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris helped incite the attack and gave credence to a process that had no chance of succeeding and put all of us in danger."

"In his effort to appease Donald Trump and his supporters," it continued, "Cruz encouraged these terrorists to wage armed insurrection against America."

The Texas lawmakers cite Article I, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution—which allows for the punishment, including expulsion, for "disorderly behavior" by a member—to argue that Schumer and McConnell have the authority to initiate such a process for Cruz.

On Saturday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.)—the most right-wing member of the Democratic caucus—said that the 14th Amendment "should be a consideration" for both Cruz and Hawley.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that no U.S. lawmaker holding office "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

While Manchin says, he gets "along fine" with Cruz, "what he did was totally outside the realm of our responsibilities or our privileges."

Progressives, meanwhile, have consistently called for both Hawley and Cruz to resign or be removed ever since last week's attack.

"There can be no normalizing or looking away from what played out before our eyes," Sen. Patty Murray, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said last week as she called on both Cruz and Hawley to resign. 

"The violent mob that attacked the Capitol was made up of people who don’t accept democracy, and want to take this country by use of force," she stated. "Any Senator who stands up and supports the power of force over the power of democracy has broken their oath of office."

Meet the GOP State AGs Who Spread Election Lies That Fueled an Insurrection

Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) never acknowledged its role in fueling Trump supporters' ire by sharing repeatedly debunked lies about the outcome of the presidential election.


Published on
Saturday, January 16, 2021
In November, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (left) became the chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association, while Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (right) became RAGA's policy chair and chair of the group's Rule of Law Defense Fund, which was among the sponsors of the Trump rally preceding the U.S. Capitol Riot and sent out robocalls urging people to march to the Capitol to "stop the steal." (Photo: Official portraits)

In November, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (left) became the chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association, while Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (right) became RAGA's policy chair and chair of the group's Rule of Law Defense Fund, which was among the sponsors of the Trump rally preceding the U.S. Capitol Riot and sent out robocalls urging people to march to the Capitol to "stop the steal." (Photo: Official portraits)

After its nonprofit subsidiary promoted lies about election fraud and made a robocall ahead of the Capitol riot urging Trump supporters to march there to "stop the steal," the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA)—a political spending group that promotes the election of GOP state AGs—is under fire for its role in the campaign to block certification of the presidential election.

On Jan. 11, five days after the bloody, feces-strewn riot that left four protesters and one Capitol police officer dead, RAGA Executive Director Adam Piper resigned his post, a move RAGA announced without explanation. Since then, a number of companies and other organizations have said they will suspend or reconsider their donations to the group.

Piper, who held leadership roles in South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson's office from 2011 to 2017, previously served as RAGA's policy director. He also formerly served as president and executive director of RAGA's Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), a 501(c)(4) secret-money nonprofit whose most recently available IRS filing says its mission is to "share best practices among state attorneys general." The day before the riot, RLDF sent robocalls announcing, "At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal," according to reporting by Documented, a watchdog group that investigates corporate influence. That hour coincided with the planned timing of the election certification vote.

RAGA's RLDF was also a sponsor of the rally preceding the riot, where President Trump fired up the crowd with false allegations of election theft while U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama told protesters, "Today is the day that American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass"—for which he faces House censure. (Brooks, a lawyer and former Tuscaloosa assistant district attorney, has since incorrectly blamed the riot on "antifa.") Beside RLDF, the rally's other sponsoring groups were the Black Conservatives Fund, Eighty Percent Coalition, Moms for America, Peaceably Gather, Phyllis Schafly Eagles, Stop the Steal, Tea Party Patriots, Turning Point Action, WildProtest.com, and Women for America First, as Document reported.

Following the ensuing riot—which led to the injury and eventual death of Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, the suicide of another Capitol police officer, the injuries of at least 58 D.C. police officers, and the shooting death of a protester by Capitol police—Piper and other RAGA leaders issued a statement condemning what they called "anarchy." However, RAGA did not acknowledge its role in fueling Trump supporters' ire by sharing repeatedly debunked lies about the outcome of the presidential election, which was certified by all 50 states, Republican- and Democrat-led alike, and called "the most secure in American history" by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Alabama AG Steve Marshall took over the leadership of the RLDF from Utah AG Sean Reyes in November; Marshall also serves as RAGA's policy chair. He told the Montgomery Advertiser that he was unaware of RLDF's involvement in the anti-certification rally and blamed staff. Marshall was appointed AG by former Gov. Robert Bentley (R) in 2017 to replace Luther Strange, who filled Jeff Sessions' U.S. Senate seat when he became Trump's attorney general. A former Democrat who switched to the GOP in 2011, Marshall's statement on the pro-Trump mob's violence at the Capitol drew a distinction between what he called the "passionate but peaceful protestors" who had gathered as lawmakers certified the election and "those who chose to engage in violence and anarchy"—who, he said, "should and will be held accountable under the law." A month before he took the RLDF's reins, Marshall led a successful challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down a federal court order allowing curbside voting in Alabama for voters worried about contracting COVID-19.

Besides Marshall and Reyes, other members of RAGA's 2021 executive committee are AGs Chris Carr of Georgia and Eric Schmitt of Missouri, chair and vice chair respectively, and members Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Mike Hunter of Oklahoma, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Ashley Moody of Florida, and South Carolina's Wilson. Landry chaired the group last year, which RAGA called a "historic year" in which Republicans "enforced law and order amid nationwide anarchy and violence." Among RAGA's fundraising campaigns in 2020, a year that saw a nationwide uprising against police brutality and racial injustice, was one called "Lawless Liberals," featuring videos titled "Our America vs. Their America," "Antifa Is an Organization" (restricted as "inappropriate for some users"), and "This Is Getting Scary." In addition, RAGA sent out tweets before and after the election promoting false conspiracy theories that the Democrats were conspiring to "steal" it, as Popular Information reported.

RAGA leaders were also involved in Texas AG Ken Paxton's lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the presidential election results in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, claiming changes made to accommodate voters in the COVID-19 pandemic were unlawful. Among those signing on to the suit were RAGA's Hunter, Landry, Marshall, Moody, Reyes, Schmitt and Wilson, as well as the Republican AGs of Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

The Supreme Court ruled that Texas lacked standing to bring the case, one of more than 60 lawsuits challenging the presidential election results that were rejected by state and federal courts. But the judiciary's rejection of the legal gambit did not stop RAGA's RLDF from continuing to falsely claim in its Jan. 5 robocall that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen."

RAGA funders reconsider

RAGA was formed in 1999 by conservatives including former Texas Attorney General John Cornyn seeking to curb lawsuits against corporate wrongdoers. (Three years later, Cornyn would be elected to the U.S. Senate, where's he's now his state's senior senator; he split with junior Sen. Ted Cruz over certifying the 2020 presidential election, saying that "allegations alone will not suffice" and "evidence is required.") Three years later when the Republican State Leadership Committee was launched, RAGA operated as its subsidiary until becoming independent in 2014. At the time of RAGA's founding there were 12 Republican attorneys general nationwide; today there are 26, including in 11 of the 13 Southern states.

RAGA is organized as a 527 nonprofit under IRS rules. Such groups are permitted to raise unlimited funds from individuals, corporations or labor unions but must register with the IRS and disclose contributions and expenditures. They can work to influence issues, policies, appointments, or elections but are not supposed to coordinate with candidates' campaigns. 527s can be dominant forces in elections, however: In the 2016 AG race in West Virginia, for example, RAGA bought $6.8 million in ads supporting the re-election of Republican Patrick Morrisey, outspending both his and his opponent's campaigns. Morrisey, who served as RAGA's chair in 2017, has declined to comment on the group's role in the Capitol riot.

Facing South reviewed the three quarterly disclosures RAGA filed with the IRS in 2020 (firstsecond, and third) as well as the post-election filing covering the period up to Nov. 23. During that period the group raised over $18.3 million—much of it from corporate interests.

The group's biggest donor by far, giving over $2.7 million, is The Concord Fund of Washington, D.C. Known until recently as the Judicial Crisis Network, this far-right secret-money network has been working with President Trump to get allies appointed to the federal judiciary; it also pushed voting restrictions before the 2020 election, according to reporting by OpenSecrets.org and The Guardian. It's run by Carrie Severino, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife, Ginni Thomas, took down her Facebook page after reports surfaced about her promotion of the Jan. 6 anti-certification rally.

Among the other donors who have given RAGA at least six-figure contributions in 2020 were the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform ($750,000); Karen Wright and Thomas Rastin of Ohio gas compressor manufacturer Ariel Corp. ($500,000 each); multinational conglomerate Koch Industries ($375,000); multilevel marketing company Melaleuca ($290,000); Virginia tobacco giant Altria ($275,000); index-fund pioneer Rex Sinquefield of Missouri ($250,000); telecomm firm Comcast ($210,315); attorney and former U.S. diplomat C. Boyden Gray ($200,000); pharma company Pfizer ($150,930); Ronald Cameron, owner of Arkansas poultry giant Mountaire Farms ($150,000); Cherokee Nation Businesses of Oklahoma ($150,000); billionaire Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus of Atlanta ($150,000); Wal-Mart Stores ($140,000); Home Depot ($130,957); Anthem, the largest for-profit managed care company in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association ($130,000); Lowe's home improvement company ($125,775); Ace Cash Express ($125,000); AT&T ($125,000); financial services firm AWL Inc. ($125,000); Anschutz Corp., owner of Coachella Music Festival ($125,000); home health company Caremark ($125,000); health care insurer subsidiary Centene Management ($125,000);  Fears Nachawati, a personal injury law firm in Dallas ($125,000); media and internet holding company InterActiveCorp, ($125,000); e-cigarette maker JUUL ($125,000); home health services company LHC Group of Lafayette, Louisiana ($125,000); online dating company Match Group ($125,000); pharma company Horizon Therapeutics ($100,265); retail giant Amazon ($100,000); brewer Anheuser-Busch ($100,000); retired banking executive Leslie Baker of Winston-Salem, North Carolina ($100,000); electricity company Entergy of Louisiana ($100,000); General Motors ($100,000); billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel ($100,000); and Uber Technologies ($100,000).

RAGA's disclosure reports show the group also has a number of major donors in Southern states. They include numerous energy interests: NextEra Energy of Juno Beach, Florida ($75,000); Valero Energy of San Antonio, Texas ($50,350); Dominion Energy of Richmond, Virginia ($50,000); Texas-based oil giant ExxonMobil ($50,000); Texas gas driller Range Resources ($50,000); Southern Company of Atlanta ($42,500); CenterPoint Energy of Houston ($25,000); Florida Power & Light ($25,000); Georgia Power ($25,000); Diversified Gas and Oil of Birmingham, Alabama ($15,000); and Duke Energy, headquartered in North Carolina ($10,000). RAGA's Southern donors also include health care interests: Fresenius Medical Care of Metairie, Louisiana ($50,800); Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina ($50,000); Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA ($50,000); Ochsner Clinic Foundation of New Orleans ($50,000); Smile Direct teledentistry company of Nashville, Tennessee ($40,000); Sensiva Health of New Orleans ($25,000); and Tenet Healthcare of Dallas ($25,000). Others major Southern donors are Atlanta-based Coca-Cola ($50,000); software giant SAS Institute of Cary, North Carolina ($50,000); Sazerac, an alcoholic beverage company with offices in Kentucky and Louisiana ($50,000); Smithfield Foods of Virginia ($50,000); Tyson Foods of Arkansas ($40,000); Reynolds American tobacco of North Carolina ($30,000); home construction giant Lennar Corp. of Miami ($15,000); and U.S. Sugar of Lewiston, Florida.

Other prominent companies and organizations that made major donations to RAGA last year are the National Rifle Association ($85,000), Cigna Health and Life Insurance ($80,350), Caesar's Entertainment ($75,350), Facebook ($75,000), TikTok ($75,000), Charter Communications ($50,645), University of Phoenix ($50,400), American Petroleum Institute ($50,000), Johnson & Johnson ($50,350), Fox Corp. ($50,000), Monsanto ($50,000), American Gas Association ($40,000), Microsoft ($36,622), Toyota ($35,000), National Beer Wholesalers Association ($25,750), DoorDash ($25,000), JPMorgan Chase PAC ($25,000), PepsiCo ($25,000), Walgreens ($25,000), Yelp ($15,375), and Lyft ($15,000).

Taking a longer perspective, ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer shows RAGA's industry-level funders from 2012 to 2019. Among the biggest are the Alliance of Automobile ManufacturersBlue Cross and Blue Shield AssociationDistilled Spirits CouncilRecording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. RAGA also received significant funding from numerous energy industry groups including the American Fuel and Petrochemical ManufacturersAmerican Natural Gas Alliance, and the Edison Electric Institute. Not surprisingly, RAGA has been involved in efforts to block state action on climate change, as DeSmogBlog has reported. Climate change, like the 2020 election, has been a target of a corporate-backed disinformation campaign that has involved RAGA donors, including ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute.

The public outrage over the riot at the U.S. Capitol is hurting RAGA's fundraising. Popular Information reports that the University of Phoenix is demanding its $50,400 donation back, while DoorDash, Edison Electric Institute, Facebook, Lyft, RIAA, and Smithfield Foods said they are suspending further contributions to RAGA. The Cherokee Nation has also announced it's withdrawing its $150,000 donation to the group. And Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Smile Direct told Popular Information they're reviewing their contribution policies in light of RAGA's messaging.

RAGA has not released any additional statements on the riot or its funders' decision to walk away. But at least one leader is distancing from the organization, at least in a small way: The Tampa Bay Times reported that Florida AG Moody erased the RLDF, on whose board she served, from her online biography.

Sue Sturgis

Sue Sturgis is the Director and regular contributor to the Institute for Southern Study's online magazine, Facing South, with a focus on energy and environmental issues. Sue is the author or co-author of five Institute reports, including Faith in the Gulf (Aug/Sept 2008), Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (January 2008) and Blueprint for Gulf Renewal (Aug/Sept 2007). Sue holds a Masters in Journalism from New York University.

Sunday, January 17, 2021

'Talk About a Super Spreader': Analysis Finds Online Election Misinformation Fell by 73% After Trump Barred

After Trump's lies disappeared from Twitter and Facebook, the dissemination of falsehoods and the conversations based on them fell dramatically.

Published on
 by
"The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday," reports the Washington Post, "highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites—reinforcing and amplifying each other—and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference." (Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/cc)

"The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday," reports the Washington Post, "highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites—reinforcing and amplifying each other—and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference." (Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/cc)

A new analysis of online misinformation released Saturday showed that false and wildly misleading content regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election was reduced by nearly three-fourths overall after President Donald Trump was barred from posting on major social media sites in the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building by his supporters.

The research firm Zignal Labs, as the Washington Post reports, calculated that conversations based on misinformation "plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week."

According to the Post:

The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday, highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites—reinforcing and amplifying each other—and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference.

Twitter's ban of Trump on Jan. 8, after years in which @realDonaldTrump was a potent online megaphone, has been particularly significant in curbing his ability to push misleading claims about what state and federal officials have called a free and fair election on Nov. 3.

Trump's banishment was followed by other actions by social media sites, including Twitter's ban of more than 70,000 accounts affiliated with the baseless QAnon ideology, which played a key role in fomenting the Capitol siege on Jan. 6.

"Together, those actions will likely significantly reduce the amount of online misinformation in the near term," Kate Starbird, disinformation researcher at the University of Washington, told the Post. "What happens in the long term is still up in the air."

Writing for the media watchdog outlet Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) on Friday, journalist Alan MacLeod warned that even if Trump's current ban from prominent social media is justified, the fact that these platforms have such outsized power is a danger to free speech rights and democracy in the long run.

"It's difficult to argue that Trump did not repeatedly violate Twitter's rules against 'threaten[ing] violence' and 'glorification of violence,' justifying his ban," wrote MacLeod. "But we urgently need to rethink the power of these social media behemoths, because there are plenty of other examples where their enforcement of their rules has been arbitrary and non-transparent."