Tag: societal issues

ADL says it will resume advertising on X following feud with Elon Musk | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
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The Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday said it plans to resume advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, following a spat with owner Elon Musk.

Musk last month threatened to sue the ADL for defamation, claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform had hurt X’s advertising revenue. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt pushed back on the claims, saying that while the ADL was part of a coalition of groups that called on companies to pause advertising on the platform immediately following Musk’s acquisition last year, it had not been engaged in such calls in recent months.

Musk’s statements about the group also amplified a campaign of antisemitic hate against the organization that had begun prior to Musk’s legal threat, leading to a surge of threats directed at the ADL, Greenblatt told CNN last month.

The rights group reiterated in a statement Wednesday that “any allegation that ADL has somehow orchestrated a boycott of X or caused billions of dollars of losses to the company or is ‘pulling the strings’ for other advertisers is false.”

“Indeed, we ourselves were advertising on the platform until the anti-ADL attacks began a few weeks ago,” the group said. “We now are preparing to do so again to bring our important message on fighting hate to X and its users.”

Musk responded to the ADL’s statement in a post Wednesday saying, “Thank you for clarifying that you support advertising on X.”

The statement appears to mark a resolution — for now — to weekslong tension between Musk and the ADL, which has coincided with incidents of antisemitism rising across the United States. But the group says it will continue to monitor for antisemitic content on X.

“As we have noted in our research over the past several years, X – along with other social media platforms — has a serious issue with antisemites and other extremists using these platforms to push their hateful ideas and, in some cases, bully Jewish and other users,” it said. “A better, healthier, and safer X would be a win for the world … As we do with all platforms, we will credit X as it moves in that direction, and we also will call it out when it has not.”

The ADL and other similar organizations, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate, have said in reports that the volume of hate speech on the website has grown dramatically under Musk’s stewardship. (Musk has criticized the findings.)

Two brands in August paused their ad spending on X after their advertisements ran alongside an account promoting Nazism. X suspended the account after the issue was flagged and said ad impressions on the page were minimal.

X has emphasized its new “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” policy that aims to limit the reach of so-called lawful but awful content on the platform and to protect brands from having their ads appear alongside such content. CEO Linda Yaccarino has also promoted additional brand safety controls for advertisers, including the ability to avoid having their ads show next to “targeted hate speech, sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity, obscenity, spam, [and] drugs.”

Asked about Musk’s threats to sue the ADL in an interview last week, Yaccarino said, “I wish that would be different … We’re looking into that.” She added that the ADL should acknowledge X’s progress on addressing antisemitism.

It appears the platform may have more work to do. A search on Wednesday for Greenblatt’s name immediately surfaced multiple hateful and antisemitic tweets about the ADL leader.

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August 2, 2023
US Coast Guard leaders long concealed a critical report about racism, hazing and sexual misconduct | CNN Politics

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CNN
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For nearly a decade, US Coast Guard leaders have concealed a critical report that exposed racism, hazing, discrimination and sexual assault across the agency.

The 2015 “Culture of Respect” study, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, documented how employees complained of a “boys will be boys” and “I got through it so can you” culture. Many said they feared they would be ostracized and retaliated against for reporting abuse and that those who did come forward often had their complaints dismissed by supervisors.

Some of the report’s core findings mirrored those of another secret investigation into rapes and sexual assaults at the Coast Guard’s academy. The existence of that probe, which was dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor and completed in 2019, was revealed by CNN earlier this year. That investigation found that serious misconduct had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials, allowing alleged offenders to rise within the ranks of the Coast Guard and other military branches.

Following CNN’s stories on the Fouled Anchor investigation and subsequent Congressional outrage, the Coast Guard’s commandant, Linda Fagan, apologized to cadets and the workforce, and acknowledged that the Coast Guard needed to be more transparent to service members, Congress and the public about such matters.

“Trust and respect thrive in transparency but are shattered by silence,” she wrote.

But under her watch, the Coast Guard continued to keep the report hidden from the public even though she had been asked to release it long before the Fouled Anchor controversy unfolded this summer. And although the Culture of Respect study is more than eight years old, more than a dozen current and recent Coast Guard employees and academy cadets told CNN many of the problems that were identified continue to plague the agency.

In response to questions from CNN this week, a spokesman for Fagan said the commandant plans to make the report public next week as part of her “commitment to transparency,” alongside the findings from a 90-day internal study of sexual assault and harassment within the agency, prompted by the Fouled Anchor reporting.

Coast Guard officials further said in a statement that the Culture of Respect report was not originally intended to be released widely to the workforce, but rather was to be used by senior leaders to inform policy decisions. Officials, however, did not explain why Fagan had not found a way to release the report sooner, particularly since alleged victims or perpetrators were not named in the report.

The document has long been shrouded in secrecy. The copy of the report obtained by CNN states that it was to be stored in “a locked container or area offering sufficient protection against theft, compromise, inadvertent access and unauthorized disclosure.” It was to be distributed only to people on a “need to know basis” and should not be released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act, the report stated.

The study, which was conducted internally and included interviews from nearly 300 people from across the organization, highlighted concerns that “blatant sexual harassment of women” and hazing were regularly accepted as just part of the culture. Those accused of discrimination, assault and other misconduct, were allowed to “escape accountability and instead resign, retire, or transfer,” the report found, with some offenders getting rehired by the Coast Guard in civil service positions even after being forced to retire or otherwise leave military service. “We are allowing potentially dangerous members back into society with no punishment,” stated one employee. Others said leaders brushed serious problems ‘under the rug,” and that “senior leaders care about themselves and their careers” instead of “the folks that work for them.”

Authors of the report also noted a common concern among victims of misconduct, who said they believed coming forward would mean putting their careers on the line with little hope of their alleged perpetrators facing serious consequences. “Victims are ostracized, there is a stigma,” one person told interviewers. “No one believes them, no one helps them.”

Even seeking mental health treatment could prove risky, they said, with one interviewee bringing up how the Coast Guard could “involuntarily discharge” employees diagnosed with a mental health condition in the wake of an assault or other traumatic experience on the job.

Trust and respect thrive in transparency but are shattered by silence

Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan

Examples cited in the report reveal a culture in which service members faced pervasive assault, harassment, sexism, racism and other discrimination. In one case, multiple witnesses saw a supervisor striking a subordinate but nobody came forward to report it because of fear of retaliation.

Improving the Coast Guard’s culture would in some cases require “fundamentally different approaches,” the report concluded. The Coast Guard said this week it had enacted or partially enacted 60 of 129 recommendations, including additional training and additional support services for victims. Nine more are in the works, according to the Coast Guard’s statement agency, and the it “found better ways to achieve the desired result” for 20 others.

The original report had also recommended that a new review be conducted every four years, but that did not happen. The Coast Guard said other studies of the workforce culture have been conducted instead.

Recent government data and records, meanwhile, show that dangerous and discriminatory behavior is still rarely punished at the agency.

Almost half of female service members who reported a case of sexual harassment said the person they complained to took no action, according to a 2021 military survey. Nearly a third said they were punished for bringing up the harassment. Meanwhile, the vast majority of women who allegedly experienced “unwanted sexual contact” said they chose not to report it, often citing concerns about negative consequences or that the process wouldn’t be fair and that nothing would end up coming of their allegations.

Instead, records show how employees found to have committed serious wrongdoing have escaped court martial proceedings or military discharge. As a result, alleged perpetrators avoided criminal records and their retirement benefits were not affected.

A cadet at the Coast Guard Academy accused of sexual assault by two different classmates in the 2019-20 school year, for example, was kicked out of the academy but allowed to enlist in the Coast Guard to pay back the cost of the schooling he had received. Around the same time, a lieutenant commander was allowed to resign in lieu of going to trial for military crimes including sexual assault and drunk and disorderly conduct. Even when another officer was found guilty at a court martial of abusing his seniority to “obtain sexual favors with a subordinate,” he received only a letter of reprimand.

The Coast Guard did not comment on concerns that problems remain at the agency, or the statistics or examples cited by CNN.

The limited access to the Culture of Respect has been a topic of contention for years within the workforce and even Congress.

Fagan was asked about the report last year by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman in a list of questions submitted as part of Congressional testimony. She criticized the agency for not releasing it publicly, saying this was “limiting the workforce and the public’s visibility into the problems that were identified and the recommended solutions.”

Watson Coleman also pushed Fagan, who took the helm of the Coast Guard in June of 2022, to commit to completing a new study and releasing it to the public this time, but Fagan did not directly answer the question – instead citing other recent studies.

More recently, Fagan was asked about releasing the report while attending a faculty meeting at the Coast Guard Academy. She was there following the Fouled Anchor debacle, promising more transparency when a captain who taught at the school called upon her to release the Culture of Respect report, according to multiple people who attended the meeting.

Retired Coast Guard Commander Kimberly Young-McLear, who is a Black lesbian woman, has been perhaps the most vocal in requesting that the report be released.

Her efforts to get the report disseminated stem from her own complaints about “severe and pervasive bullying, harassing, and discriminating behavior” based on her race, gender, sexual orientation and advocacy for equal opportunity in the Coast Guard.

After filing a whistleblower complaint in 2017, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General found that she had indeed faced unlawful retaliation. Yet to this day, none of the accused service members from her case have faced any consequences. Young-McLear said she has never received a written apology from Coast Guard leaders despite requests from Congress, and that the years of harassment and lack of accountability have taken a significant mental toll on her.

She said she learned about the existence of the Culture of Respect report while she worked at the Coast Guard’s academy and that she was able to read it when she attended a small summit discussing its findings in 2019. She was outraged when she saw that it exposed the same issues she had reported.

We are allowing potentially dangerous members back into society with no punishment.

Coast Guard employee

“Had the Coast Guard actually taken the 2015 Culture of Respect report results seriously… then perhaps the years of bullying, harassment, intimidation, and retaliation I endured could have been prevented altogether,” Young-McLear said in Congressional testimony at 2021 hearing on diversity and accountability within the Coast Guard, questioning why the report still hadn’t been made public.

In the last four years, Young-McLear said she has asked for the report to be released more than two dozen times, to various admirals and to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard. A handful of other academy employees have made similar pleas at faculty meetings with the school’s superintendent, she said. “We’ve been saying it until we’ve been blue in the face.”

The Coast Guard’s secrecy and inaction, she says, speak to the very same issues the Culture of Respect report and other examinations have repeatedly raised and show that the agency has failed to hold itself to task in the same way perpetrators have been let off the hook.

“If we don’t hold individuals and institutions accountable,” said Young-McLear, “it is providing a safe haven for abusers and allowing them to rise through the ranks.”

Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.

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August 2, 2023
The identities behind the 30 unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s Georgia case | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Fulton County’s sweeping indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 additional co-defendants also includes details involving 30 “unindicted co-conspirators” – people who Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis alleges took part in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

Some of the co-conspirators are key Trump advisers, like Boris Epshteyn, while several others are likely Georgia officials who were the state’s fake electors for Donald Trump.

One of the unindicted co-conspirators who appears multiple times in the indictment is Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Willis was barred by a state judge from investigating Jones after she hosted a fundraiser last year for Jones’ Democratic opponent when he was a state senator running for lieutenant governor.

The 98-page document alleges the 30 unindicted co-conspirators, who are not named, “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities” across the 41 charges laid out in the indictment.

“Prosecutors use the ‘co-conspirator’ label for people who are not charged in the indictment but nonetheless were participants in the crime,” said Elie Honig, a CNN senior legal analyst and former federal and state prosecutor. “We do this to protect the identity and reputation of uncharged people – though they often are readily identifiable – and, at times, to turn up the pressure and try to flip them before a potential indictment drops.”

CNN was able to identify some of the co-conspirators by piecing together details included in the indictment. Documents reviewed from previous reporting also provide clues, especially the reams of emails and testimony from the House January 6 Committee’s report released late last year.

CNN has been able to identify or narrow down nearly all of the unindicted co-conspirators:

The indictment refers to Trump’s speech on November 4, 2020, “falsely declaring victory in the 2020 presidential election” and that Individual 1 discussed a draft of that speech approximately four days earlier, on October 31, 2020.

The January 6 committee obtained an email from Fitton sent on October 31 to Trump’s assistant Molly Michael and his communications adviser Dan Scavino, which says, “Please see below a draft statement as you requested.”

The statement Fitton wrote also says in part, “We had an election today – and I won.”

The indictment states that co-conspirator 3 appeared at the infamous November 19, 2020, press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, with Rudy Giuliani, one of the defendants in the case. Epshteyn was there.

The indictment also includes two emails between co-conspirator 3, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, two lawyers who pushed the strategy of then-Vice President Mike Pence trying to overturn the election on January 6, 2021, including one with a draft memo for options of how to proceed on January 6.

According to emails released by the January 6 committee, Epshteyn was the third person on those emails.

Individual 4 received an email from co-defendant David Shafer, who was then Georgia’s Republican Party chair, on November 20, 2020, that said Scott Graham Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, “has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie,” according to the indictment.

CNN obtained court documents that show Shafer sent this email to Sinners in November 2020: “Scott Hall has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie. I know him.” Hall is one of the 19 defendants charged in the indictment.

The indictment notes an additional email from December 12, 2020, from Shafer to Individual 4 advising them to “touch base” with each of the Trump presidential elector nominees in Georgia in advance of the December 14, 2020, meeting to confirm their attendance.

CNN reporting from June 2022 reveals an email exchange between Sinners and David Shafer on December 13, 2020, 18 hours before the group of alternate electors gathered at the Georgia State Capitol.

“I must ask for your complete discretion in this process,” Sinners wrote. “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result – a win in Georgia for President Trump – but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.”

Kerik’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, confirmed to CNN that his client is the unnamed individual listed in the indictment as co-conspirator 5. The indictment refers to co-conspirator 5 taking part in several meetings with lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Arizona, states Trump was contesting after the 2020 election.

That included the meeting Kerik attended at the White House on November 25, 2020, with a group of Pennsylvania legislators, along with Trump, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and individual 6.

Parlatore took issue with Willis’ definition of co-conspirator in the case of Kerik, saying that the indictment only refers to him in the context of receiving emails and attending meetings.

The indictment says on November 25, 2020, Trump, Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, Individuals 5 and 6 met at the White House with a group of Pennsylvania legislators.

According to the January 6 committee report, Waldron was among the visitors who were at the White House that day, along with Kerik and attorney Katherine Freiss. Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Meadows, explained that their conversation with the president touched on holding a special session of the Pennsylvania state legislature to appoint Trump electors.

The indictment also says on December 21, 2020, Sidney Powell, a defendant in the case, sent an email to Individuals 6, 21 and 22 that they were to immediately “receive a copy of all data” from Dominion’s voting systems in Michigan.

The Washington Post reported last August that the email stated Waldron was among the three people to receive the data, along with Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders.

Waldron is the only person who was involved in both the White House meeting and received the Powell email.

The indictment says Giuliani re-tweeted a post from co-conspirator 8 on December 7, 2020, calling upon Georgia voters to contact their local representatives and ask them to sign a petition for a special session to ensure “every legal vote is counted.” The date and content of the tweet match a tweet posted by Jones, who was at the time a state senator.

Jones, who was elected lieutenant governor in November, appears more than a dozen times throughout the indictment as co-conspirator 8, including as a fake elector.

After the 2020 election, Jones was calling for a special session of the Georgia legislature, something Gov. Brian Kemp and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan refused to do.

On Thursday, Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, told CNN that he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Jones’ role in the state’s 2020 election interference case, after a judge blocked Willis from investigating him last year.

The indictment lists several emails sent to co-conspirator 9 related to preparations for the fake electors who met on December 14, 2020, including an email from Chesebro “to help coordinate with the other 5 contested States, to help with logistics of the electors in other States hopefully joining in casting their votes on Monday.”

According to emails obtained by the January 6 committee, that email was sent to an account belong to the Georgia GOP treasurer, which at the time was Brannan.

Co-conspirator 9 is also included in the indictment as one of the 13 unindicted co-conspirators who served as fake electors.

Co-conspirators 10 and 11 are Georgia GOP officials Carolyn Fisher and Vikki Consiglio

The indictment says on December 10, 2020, Ken Chesebro sent an email to Georgia state Republican Chair David Shafer and Individuals 9, 10 and 11, with documents that were to be used by Trump electors to create fake certificates.

The January 6 committee obtained as part of its evidence an email from Chesebro sent on December 10 sent to Shafer and three other email addresses. One is for Carolyn Fisher, the former Georgia GOP first vice chair, one is for the Georgia Republican Party treasurer and one is for the Georgia GOP assistant treasurer, the role Consiglio was serving in 2020.

The email contains attachments of memos and certificates that could be used to help swap out the Biden electors with a slate of electors for Trump.

Both co-conspirators 10 and 11 also served as fake electors in Georgia.

Co-conspirators 2 and 8-19 are the fake electors

Of the 30 unindicted co-conspirators, 13 are listed as the fake electors for Donald Trump, who signed papers “unlawfully falsely holding themselves out as the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the State of Georgia,” according to the indictment.

Three of the 16 Georgia fake electors were charged in the indictment: David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathleen Alston Latham.

The other 13 fake electors, according to the fake electors certificate published by the National Archives, are Jones (co-conspirator 8), Joseph Brannan (co-conspirator 9), James “Ken” Carroll, Gloria Godwin, David Hanna, Mark Hennessy, Mark Amick, John Downey, Daryl Moody, Brad Carver, CB Yadav and two others who appear to be Individuals 10 and 11.

Several of the fake electors who were not charged are only listed in the indictment for their role signing on as electors for Trump, while others, like Jones, appear in other parts of the indictment as being more actively involved with the alleged conspiracy.

The indictment says Individual 20 was part of a meeting at the White House on December 18, 2020, with Trump, Giuliani and Powell, known to have discussed the possibility of seizing voting machines.

The December 18 meeting featured prominently during some of the hearings from the January 6 committee. All but two of the outside advisers who attended have been named as co-defendants in the indictment already: former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

The meeting featured fiery exchanges between Trump’s White House lawyers and his team of outside advisers, including on whether to appoint Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate voter fraud, according to the indictment and previous details that have been disclosed about the meeting.

The outside advisers famously got into a screaming match with Trump’s White House lawyers – Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann – at the Oval Office meeting. Cipollone and Herschmann, along with Meadows, pushed back intensely on the proposals, Cipollone and Herschmann testified to the January 6 committee.

Co-conspirators 21 and 22 are Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders

Co-conspirators 21 and 22 are Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders – who are both affiliated with Byrne’s America Project, a conservative advocacy group that contributed funding to Arizona’s Republican ballot audit. Hayes was a former surfer from Hawaii and Sanders has a cybersecurity background in the private sector.

The indictment says on Dec. 21, 2020, Sidney Powell sent an email to the chief operations officer of SullivanStrickler, saying that individual 6, who CNN identified as Waldron, along with individuals 21 and 22, were to immediately “receive a copy of all data” from Dominion’s voting systems in Michigan.

According to the Washington Post, Conan and Todd were the other two people listed on the email to receive the data.

The final eight co-conspirators listed in the indictment are connected to the effort to access voting machines in Georgia’s Coffee County.

Co-conspirator 25 and 29 are a Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and analyst Jeffrey Lenberg

The indictment says that Misty Hampton allowed co-conspirators 25 and 29 to access non-public areas of the Coffee County elections office on January 18, 2021. Logan and Lenberg were the two outsiders granted access to the elections office that day by Hampton, according to surveillance video previously obtained by CNN. No one else was given access to the office that day, according to a CNN review of the footage.

The indictment also notes that co-conspirator 25 downloaded Coffee County election data that SullivanStrickler then had uploaded to a separate server. Documents previously obtained by CNN show five accounts that downloaded the data – one account belongs to Logan and none of them belong to Lenberg. Still, CNN could not definitively determine who exactly downloaded the data.

Logan and his company conducted the so-called Republican audit of the 2020 ballots cast in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

The indictment says that co-conspirator 28 “sent an e-mail to the Chief Operations Officer of SullivanStrickler LLC” directing him to transmit data copied from Coffee County to co-conspirator 30 and Powell. CNN has previously reported on emails Penrose and Powell arranged upfront payment to a cyber forensics firm that sent a team to Coffee County.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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August 2, 2023
Rep. Nancy Mace says Republicans in swing districts are ‘walking the plank’ because of abortion restrictions | CNN Politics

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CNN
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GOP Rep. Nancy Mace has a warning for her party about some efforts to restrict abortion without exceptions – and how it could affect moderate House Republicans on whom their narrow majority depends.

“I think they’re walking the plank,” the South Carolina Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that aired Sunday, when asked if members in moderate districts like hers are doomed.

“I’m pro-life. I have a fantastic pro-life voting record, but I also understand that we cannot be a**holes to women,” said Mace, who has been vocal about including exceptions for rape in measures to restrict the procedure.

The two-term congresswoman went public about her own experience of rape during an abortion debate in the South Carolina state house before coming to Congress. “Being the victim of rape, you don’t ever get over it,” she told Bash, noting how the experience has affected her and her outspoken advocacy for exceptions.

“As a Republican woman in 2023, this is a very lonely place to be,” said Mace, who was first elected to her coastal South Carolina congressional district in 2020. “Because I feel like I’m the only woman on our side of the aisle advocating for things that all women should care about.”

Still, Mace has faced criticism for voting the party line, even on measures where abortion rights are at stake.

“I think I get labeled a flip-flopper unfairly because of that,” Mace said. “I have my own ideology that I believe in. I’ll take the vote. That doesn’t mean I want to take the vote.”

She argues she has tried to secure changes to measures she may not fully agree with. “I have been very effective at trying to push the ball – not always – but doing the best that I can. I’m only one person, and a lot of times I’m doing it alone and by myself.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last year, Mace – the first woman to graduate from the Citadel’s Corps of Cadets – has often said she’s looking for ways to show that the GOP is “pro-women.” In her interview with Bash, she called on lawmakers to address the foster care and child care systems, for example, arguing that having an abortion is a decision no woman wants to make.

In April, the congresswoman urged the Food and Drug Administration to ignore a ruling by a federal judge that suspended the approval of a medication drug used for abortion. (The Supreme Court subsequently said that the drug and regulations that make it accessible would remain in place for the time being.)

“This is an issue that Republicans have been largely on the wrong side of,” Mace told CNN at the time.

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August 2, 2023
Donald Trump is testing the resilience of Iowa’s evangelical voters | CNN Politics

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Des Moines, Iowa
CNN
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Donald Trump is testing the resilience of his evangelical support in Iowa, a key constituency that could solidify – or slow – his march to the Republican presidential nomination.

The former president’s latest comments on abortion, in which he called Florida’s six-week ban a “terrible mistake” and declined to offer a clear view on a federal ban, are being closely scrutinized by his rivals and Christian conservatives, a crucial GOP voting bloc in Iowa.

“For evangelicals, there are probably four issues that matter. Life is usually right at the top,” said Mike Demastus, pastor of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ. “Most people, the way they evaluate presidential elections, is what the gas price is. But for an evangelical? No.”

Less than four months before the Iowa caucuses open the Republican nominating contest, nuances on abortion policy will be at the center of conversation here among faith leaders like Demastus, who has met with most of the GOP candidates.

He expressed concern over Trump’s remarks on abortion since the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But he also acknowledged that Trump’s key role in the decision – appointing three of the six justices who voted with the majority – helps the former president keep evangelical voters in his corner, at least for now.

“The fact that Trump is leading in polls – he is – but you can’t take it for granted. There’s so many unknowns with Trump right now,” Demastus said in an interview. “There’s a loyalty with Trump, and people that follow him. You can’t just peel that away from some, but I think many people in the evangelical community right now are willing to hear from other people.”

Whether Iowa Republicans are willing to hear from – or actually vote for – one of Trump’s many challengers is an open question. The answer could rest inside Iowa churches, where candidates are going to great lengths to win over evangelicals, who in 2016 comprised nearly two-thirds of all GOP caucus attendees.

“They are very appreciative of the former president, but they are exhausted as well,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of influential Christian group The Family Leader. “Iowa is tailor-made to upend Trump. If he loses Iowa, there’s a competitive nomination process. If he wins Iowa, I think it’s over.”

The Iowa caucuses, in effect, have become a furious race for second place.

While Vander Plaats has been a leading Trump critic, his assessment of the Iowa caucuses is shared by allies of the former president, who plans to step up his Iowa appearances for the rest of the year. Starting with a visit to Dubuque on Wednesday, the Trump campaign is intensifying its focus here in hopes of “squeezing off the oxygen” for other rivals, a Trump adviser told CNN.

The pursuit of evangelical voters is a top priority for most candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who bowed his head as he stood at the center of a prayer circle during a weekend stop at the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ.

“Our rights are endowed by God,” DeSantis told those assembled in the sanctuary. “They do not come from the government.”

The Florida governor leaned into the abortion debate Monday, seizing on Trump’s comments and offering a warning to voters during an interview with Radio Iowa: “I think all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott called out his rivals by name Monday night at a town hall in Mason City, Iowa, telling voters which GOP contenders did not support a federal abortion ban. “I will use my entire presidency fighting for a 15-week limit,” he said.

Scott also has long been highlighting his faith, often weaving in Bible verses on the campaign trail and in his television ads. Former Vice President Mike Pence frequently talks about his religious awakening and his support for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, as a minimum.

Trump was the only major presidential candidate to bypass the annual Faith and Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet this past weekend in Des Moines, but Rebekah Gerling proudly wore a Trump sticker as she walked through the convention center. She said she supports the former president as strongly as she ever has.

“I love everything that he stands for,” Gerling said. “He’s willing to stand up for other people who do love God and believe.”

When Gerling was asked whether she was troubled by the criminal indictments the former president is facing, her friend, Theresa Gibson, also wearing a Trump sticker, jumped in before she could answer, calling the charges “false accusations.”

“They’re just going after him because he’s the front-runner,” Gibson said, “and he’s very highly supported.”

Sally Hofmann, a Republican voter who said faith drives many of her decisions, credits Trump for his appointments to the Supreme Court. But she said she is open to supporting another candidate when she walks into her neighborhood caucus in January.

“I like a lot of what Trump has done in office, but his personality concerns me a little bit,” Hofmann said. “I like what Nikki Haley is doing. I like DeSantis too. I’m in that range.”

She said some of her friends and her daughter are concerned about Trump’s rhetoric and conduct. She said it bothers her too, but she’s willing to look beyond it if necessary.

“Like I told my daughter, if I go to a doctor, and that doctor is such a good doctor to evaluate and treat my issue but doesn’t have the personality that I’m most comfortable with, I’ll still go to that doctor,” Hofmann said. “So that’s the way I look at Trump.”

Inside the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, where Demastus has preached for more than two decades, he explained how he came around to Trump in the first place. He supported Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in 2016 and was suspicious of Trump’s intentions before he took office.

“He started to do what he said he would do,” Demastus said. “I said some pretty harsh things about him at the time, but let me be clear: He won me over. He won me over because he was consistent.”

For now, Demastus echoes the sentiment of many other faith leaders, saying he is undecided, waiting and watching as the Republican presidential primary unfolds. He believes the indictments against Trump are politically motivated but worries they could weaken his chances in the general election.

“With all the litigation that’s going on, what’s going to happen? Is he going to receive a felony conviction or not?” Demastus said, ticking through a list of uncertainties hanging over the race. “I think that’s why a lot of these candidates are still in it.”

This story has been updated with additional reaction.

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August 2, 2023
'Change is necessary': Coast Guard pledges reforms after mishandling reports of sexual assault | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The US Coast Guard, rocked by allegations that its leaders for years concealed damning information about sexual assaults and other serious misconduct, released a highly critical report Wednesday acknowledging it had “failed to keep our people safe,” while vowing to make reforms that would better protect them.

After spending 90 days speaking with hundreds of service members, reading through more than 170 written comments and “sifting through a mountain of data,” an internal review team said it had heard a resounding message from the workforce that “these failures and lack of accountability are entirely unacceptable” and that leaders “must do something about it.”

“Too many Coast Guard members are not experiencing the safe, empowering workplace they expect and deserve (and) trust in Coast Guard leadership is eroding,” the authors wrote in the roughly 100-page report, noting that they had heard from victims of sexual assault and harassment stretching from the 1960s to the current day who “expressed deep rooted feelings of pain and a loss of trust in the organization.”

The scathing internal review was launched after CNN exposed a secret criminal investigation, dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, which found that serious misconduct had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials. It wasn’t until CNN started asking questions about Fouled Anchor this spring that Coast Guard leaders rushed to officially brief Congress on the scandal — leading to outrage on both sides of the aisle, multiple government investigations and proposed legislation.

CNN’s coverage of Fouled Anchor and subsequent reporting revealing that Coast Guard leaders declined to prosecute a retired officer for sexual misconduct “have led people to experience feelings ranging from disappointment to outrage,” the report said.

“For so many victims, there are even deeper levels of broken trust: in leaders who failed them in preventing and responding to sexual violence; in a military justice system with antiquated legal definitions of rape; in non-existent support programs for those impacted prior to 2000,” it stated. While the report outlined a number of changes made in the last two decades, it also acknowledged that reforms to date have not been enough to prevent assaults and properly support victims.

The review did not seek to hold past perpetrators or officials involved with the Fouled Anchor cover-up accountable, saying multiple government investigations launched by Congress remained ongoing.

Instead, it looked to the future and focused on preventing future assaults and other misconduct, describing the report as a “road map aimed at improving” the agency’s culture.

Along with the report’s findings, the Coast Guard announced a series of actions directed by the agency’s leader, Commandant Linda Fagan, through recommended changes to everything from training and victim support services to strengthening processes for holding perpetrators accountable.

“This report acknowledges the Coast Guard’s failures and uses them to inform a way ahead, rebuild trust, and set the baseline for organizational growth,” the document states, noting that many of the actions require additional funding and authority to implement.

Among the reforms are the creation of a mentorship program for victims to help them navigate the aftermath of a sexual assault, the development of a “safe to report” policy so that victims are not penalized for collateral minor misconduct (such as alcohol use at the time of an incident), more secure locks on Coast Guard Academy bedrooms and improved oversight of the school and its cadets – including a new chain of command for the academy head.

Fagan also directed officials to better keep tabs on the academy’s hallmark “Swab Summer” training program, which is run by upperclassmen at the academy, and to consider strengthening policies that allow the agency to reduce pension payments for those found to have committed misconduct.

The report was the Coast Guard’s most expansive response to the growing criticism of its handling of misconduct. And while it was being released publicly, and members of Congress had been briefed on its contents earlier, the report was specifically addressed to “U.S. Coast Guard workforce, past and present.”

“You made it clear that you want and expect our Service to confront this issue and make it better. You want our Service to deliver meaningful change,” the report stated. “Whether you’re a member who has a story to share — or the shipmate standing beside them — this is our time. Let’s get it right.”

While the Coast Guard is focused on the future, members of Congress are still determined to get answers about past failures as well.

“This new report still does not hold anyone accountable for past failures—particularly those at the Coast Guard Academy,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Coast Guard Academy is located. Murphy and other lawmakers have continued to slam the agency for its failure to be transparent about sexual assault and other misconduct. “It does lay out a modest plan to improve oversight, training, and support for survivors, but a report is nothing more than paper until concrete steps are taken.”

Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Richard Blumenthal also criticized how, despite calling this effort an “accountability” review, the Coast Guard still failed to hold anyone to task for the mishandling of sexual assault cases. Cantwell reiterated the importance of an independent investigation, saying she is looking forward to seeing the results of the probe currently being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General.

Earlier this year, CNN reported how former Commandant Karl Schultz and his second-in-command, Vice Commandant Charles Ray, failed to act on plans to share the findings of Fouled Anchor with Congress and the public. Ray resigned from his position at a Coast Guard Academy leadership institute soon after, but no other current or former Coast Guard officials have publicly faced any consequences.

“Current Coast Guard personnel are being told to trust their leadership, but their leaders aren’t holding predecessors accountable,” K. Denise Rucker Krepp, a former Coast Guard officer and former chief counsel of the Maritime Administration wrote in a recent letter to Congress, describing how she had attended a “community healing” event sponsored by the Coast Guard Academy Alumni Association last month.

“Before my first cup of coffee I learned about a woman who was raped shortly after joining the service. She never told her parents about the crime,” she wrote. “While washing my hands in the bathroom, another woman shared that she was raped while attending the Coast Guard Academy in the late 1990s. Another woman shared that she was gang-raped by three students at the school and had spent two-thirds of her life on medication because of the crimes that occurred almost 40 years ago.”

Next week, more survivors of sexual assault and harassment at the Coast Guard Academy are slated to share their experiences publicly in a Congressional hearing. The hearing, announced just yesterday, is part of an ongoing Senate probe launched in reaction to the Fouled Anchor cover-up.

Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.

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August 2, 2023
Abortion divides Iowa GOP voters ahead of crucial first primary debate | CNN Politics

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Sioux City, Iowa
CNN
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Ask Lisa McGaffey if she has ever voted for a Democrat and there is no pause.

“Oh, heavens, no,” she says quickly and emphatically. “Oh, no. There’s no – abortion. … They have to have a chance to grow up. They have to have the chance. You never know who that’s going to be.”

McGaffey is a loyal Donald Trump supporter and is grateful for his three appointments to the conservative Supreme Court majority that erased Roe v. Wade last year and returned the question of abortion rights to the states.

Two-hundred miles away, in the fast growing Des Moines suburbs, Betsy Sarcone takes a different view.

Iowa, like Florida, in recent months enacted a law outlawing most abortions at six weeks. Sarcone – a single mother and a Catholic and Republican who told us, “I don’t believe in abortion” – thinks that is too restrictive.

“I agree with a time limit,” Sarcone said in a recent interview in her West Des Moines home. “I’ve had three babies grow inside me. I agree when you feel them kicking and you feel them moving – that’s in my heart, is a time when that (a cutoff to abortion access) would be. Which is around say, like 18 weeks, something like that typically. So in my heart, that’s what I feel. I again, I just I don’t know that much further than that it’s somebody’s place to judge.”

Abortion is among the fault lines in the 2024 Republican campaign, and a likely debate topic in Wednesday’s first primary season showdown between Republican candidates – all of whom support abortion restrictions. It’s also an issue that splits GOP voters, even those who share an opposition to the procedure. Sarcone and McGaffey, for example, are among a group of Iowa Republicans we are tracking as part of a CNN project designed to view the 2024 campaign through the eyes of voters – to see firsthand if their views change over the course of the cycle, and if so, why.

Among that group is also Chris Mudd, a businessman in Cedar Falls and a Trump supporter, who signals a potential warning for GOP hopefuls on abortion.

“I’m a pro-life guy,” Mudd told us. “But I think it is a losing issue for Republicans.” Of the six-week bans enacted in Florida and later in his home state of Iowa, Mudd said: “I think that was a mistake.”

Among Republican candidates there’s some disagreement over whether a national ban should be a priority, or whether the issue is best left to the states.

Trump, for example, has called the six-week ban signed by DeSantis in Florida “too harsh.” The GOP front-runner is choosing to skip the Milwaukee debate.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina favors a federal law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mike Pence, the former vice president and Indiana governor, supports a six-week federal ban.

GOP rivals Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum describe themselves as staunchly “pro life” but argue the principled conservative position is that each state should make its own law. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has said she would sign a 15-week national ban, but also frequently notes the votes aren’t there in the current congressional balance of power and that the federal conversation is best put aside unless and until there is more consensus.

Democrats see opportunity in almost any Republican conversation about abortion, citing how the issue has consistently helped galvanize voters in elections – from ballot initiatives to last year’s midterms – since the Dobbs decision.

The last public poll on the issue in Iowa was in March, for the Des Moines Register.

A clear majority, 61% of Iowans, said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But the first competition here is the Republican caucuses, and the poll found that 59% of Republicans and 64% of evangelicals believed abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.

Sarcone, a suburban Des Moines real estate agent, made a point worth remembering as the candidates debate for the first time this week.

“I don’t know that I will have any candidate that I agree with on everything,” she said. “So the character, the leadership, the military is very important to me.”

To that end, she listed DeSantis as her early favorite, despite her opposition to a six-week ban, but said she would consider Haley, Scott and perhaps others, too.

Our first visit with this voter group, before the first debate, was to get a sense of how they rate the candidates and the issues early on.

McGaffey, an administrator at the Jolly Time Pop Corn company, was the only member of the group who brought up the abortion issue in our conversations.

Mudd, the pro-Trump businessman who’s wary of the GOP leaning too heavily into abortion, listed the economy as his lead issue.

Similarly, attorney Priscilla Forsyth from Sioux City said abortion was not an issue on her debate priority list.

“Issues like abortion are not my issue,” she said. “A lot of the social issues are not. It’s all the economy, really.”

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August 2, 2023
Elon Musk blames the ADL for 60% ad sales decline at X, threatens to sue | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
—

X owner Elon Musk is threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League for defamation, claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform have torpedoed X’s advertising revenue.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk said US advertising revenue is “still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!”

Musk also claimed that since he took over the platform in October 2022, the ADL “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”

“To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!” he said.

The ADL said as a matter of policy it does not comment on legal threats. But the organization noted it recently met with X leadership, including CEO Linda Yaccarino, who Musk hired to help revive ad revenue. Yaccarino thanked ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt following the meeting last week, saying in a post on X, “A strong and productive partnership is built on good intentions and candor.”

Meanwhile, Musk, the platform’s owner, has recently liked and engaged with a series of posts criticizing the organization.

A #BanTheADL campaign has spread on X, and the ADL accused Musk of “lifting” the campaign.

“ADL is unsurprised yet undeterred that antisemites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and other trolls have launched a coordinated attack on our organization. This type of thing is nothing new,” an ADL spokesperson said.

The ADL and other similar organizations, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate, have found that the volume of hate speech on the website has grown dramatically under Musk’s stewardship.

In one instance, the CCDH found the daily use of the n-word under Musk is triple the 2022 average and the use of slurs against gay men and trans persons are up 58% and 62%, respectively. The ADL said in a separate report that its data shows “both an increase in antisemitic content on the platform and a decrease in the moderation of antisemitic posts.”

Musk called the reports in May by the two watchdog groups “utterly false,” claiming that “hate speech impressions,” or the number of times a tweet containing hate speech has been viewed, “continue to decline” since his early days of owning the company when the platform saw a spike in hate speech designed to test Musk’s tolerance.

Still, two brands last month paused their ad spending on X after their advertisements ran alongside an account promoting Nazism. X suspended the account after the issue was flagged and said ad impressions on the page were minimal.

Last month, Musk sued the CCDH, accusing the nonprofit group of deliberately trying to drive advertisers away from the platform by publishing reports critical of the platform’s response to hateful content.

It specifically claims CCDH violated the platform’s terms of service, and federal hacking laws, by scraping data from the company’s platform and by encouraging an unnamed individual to improperly collect information about Twitter that it had provided to a third-party brand monitoring provider.

In response, CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed previously told CNN that much of the lawsuit, particularly its claim about the unnamed individual, “sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me.”

“The truth is that he’s [Elon Musk] been casting around for a reason to blame us for his own failings as a CEO,” Ahmed said, “because we all know that when he took over, he put up the bat signal to racists and misogynists, to homophobes, to antisemites, saying ‘Twitter is now a free-speech platform.’ … And now he’s surprised when people are able to quantify that there has been a resulting increase in hate and disinformation.”

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August 2, 2023
EU warns Elon Musk of ‘penalties’ for disinformation circulating on X amid Israel-Hamas war | CNN Business

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CNN
—

European officials warned X on Tuesday that the company formerly known as Twitter appears to have been hosting misinformation and illegal content about the war between Hamas and Israel, in potential violation of the European Union’s signature content moderation law.

In a letter addressed to X owner Elon Musk, Thierry Breton, a top European commissioner, said X faces “very precise obligations regarding content moderation” and that the company’s handling of the unfolding conflict so far has raised doubts about its compliance.

As a platform subject to Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), X could face billions in fines if regulators conclude that violations have occurred. X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The warning letter highlights X’s potentially vast legal exposure as it battles a wave of bogus claims linked to the war that have been attributed to everything from fake White House press releases to false news reports and out-of-context videos from unrelated conflicts or even video games.

Much of the problematic content appears to stem from platform changes made under Musk’s supervision, Breton suggested in the letter, which he shared on X.

For example, he wrote, X announced over the weekend that it was making it easier for accounts to qualify for newsworthiness exceptions to its platform rules. The change to X’s Public Interest Policy made it so that accounts no longer require a minimum of 100,000 followers to qualify; they need only be “high profile” accounts that, as before, represent current or potential government officials, political parties or political candidates.

Removing the follower threshold and replacing it with a celebrity standard leaves it “uncertain” what content, particularly “violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform,” will be removed, Breton wrote.

Under the DSA, which became enforceable for large platforms in August, companies must also act swiftly when officials highlight content that violates European laws, which X may not be doing, Breton warned.

“We have, from qualified sources, reports about potentially illegal content circulating on your service despite flags from relevant authorities,” Breton wrote.

“I remind you that following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of non-compliance, penalties can be imposed,” he added.

In an exchange on X, Musk replied to Breton. “Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports,” Musk wrote. “Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that that the public can see them.”

Breton posted back: “You are well aware of your users’ — and authorities’— reports on fake content and glorification of violence. Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk. My team remains at your disposal to ensure DSA compliance, which the EU will continue to enforce rigorously.”

The EU letter comes as misinformation about the conflict continues to spread widely across X.

On Tuesday, the investigative journalism group Bellingcat said a fake video designed to look like a BBC News report was circulating on social media.

The video falsely claimed Bellingcat found evidence that Ukraine had smuggled weapons to Hamas. Elliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, said the report was “100% fake.”

In an effort to make the video look like a real BBC News report, its creators used graphics almost identical to what the BBC uses in its own online video reports.

The video circulated on Telegram and was shared by at least one verified account on X.

X did not remove the fake BBC News video, but it did append a small label under the video noting it is “manipulated media.”

In response to a question about the fake video, a BBC spokesperson said, “In a world of increasing disinformation, we urge everyone to ensure they are getting news from a trusted source.”

Shayan Sardarizadeh, a BBC News reporter, wrote on X Tuesday, “The video is 100% fake.”

Since taking over, Musk has laid off large swaths of X’s content moderation and policy teams, prompting backlash from civil society groups, which have warned about an increased threat of misinformation and hate speech.

In what he called an effort to deter the creation of automated accounts, Musk also eliminated the traditional verification badges that once reassured users of an account’s authenticity, replacing it with a paid system that has allowed any user to receive a verification badge without undergoing an identity check. Misinformation experts have said that the move undermined users’ ability to determine the credibility of any given account, particularly during a fast-moving news event.

But Musk himself has directly contributed to the chaos, at one point sharing – and then deleting – a post recommending that users follow an account that has been known to share misinformation, including a fake report earlier this year of an explosion at the Pentagon.

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August 2, 2023
Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

A federal court blocked a newly drawn Alabama congressional map on Tuesday because it didn’t create a second majority-Black district as the Supreme Court had ordered earlier this year.

In a unanimous decision from a three-judge panel, which had overseen the case before it reached the Supreme Court, the judges wrote that they were “disturbed” by Alabama’s actions in the case.

The state had snubbed the Supreme Court’s order – a surprise 5-4 decision in June – that the maps should be redrawn. White voters currently make up the majority in six of the state’s seven congressional districts, although 27% of the state’s population is Black.

“We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires,” wrote the judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Alabama officials on Tuesday filed notice that they are appealing the ruling.

“While we are disappointed in today’s decision, we strongly believe that the Legislature’s map complies with the Voting Rights Act and the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” the office of Alabama Attorney General Steven Marshall said in a statement. “We intend to promptly seek review from the Supreme Court to ensure that the State can use its lawful congressional districts in 2024 and beyond.”

Alabama officials also asked the three-judge court to freeze its opinion invalidating the congressional map but said they will formally ask the Supreme Court for a stay on Thursday.

This redistricting battle – and separate, pending litigation over congressional maps in states such as Georgia and Florida – could determine which party controls the US House of Representatives after next year’s elections. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the chamber.

The three federal judges overseeing the Alabama case on Tuesday ordered a special master to submit three proposed maps that would create a second Black-majority district by September 25.

The panel wrote that it was “not aware of any other case” in which a state legislature had responded to being ordered to a draw map with a second majority-minority district by creating one that the state itself admitted didn’t create the required district.

“The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” and Alabama’s new map, they wrote, “plainly fails to do so.”

JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, which has been fighting the case, praised the ruling: “Elected officials ignored their responsibilities and chose to violate our democracy. We hope the court’s special master helps steward a process that ensures a fair map that Black Alabamians and our state deserve.”

This summer, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, had affirmed an earlier decision by the three-judge panel and ordered the state to redraw congressional maps to include a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it.”

The Supreme Court’s surprise decision in Alabama – coming after the right-leaning high court has chipped away at other parts of the Voting Rights Act in recent years – has given fresh hope to voting rights activists and Democrats that they could prevail in challenges to other maps they view as discriminating against minorities.

But the new map approved by Alabama’s Republican-dominated legislature – and signed into law by GOP Gov. Kay Ivey – in July created only one majority-Black district and boosted the share of Black voters in a second district from roughly 30% to nearly 40%.

The pending cases center on whether GOP state legislators drew congressional maps after the 2020 census that weakened the power of Black voters in violation of Section 2 of the historic Voting Rights Act.

Republicans control all statewide offices in Alabama and all but one congressional seat. The single Black-majority congressional district is represented by Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, the state’s first Black woman elected to Congress.

Alabama officials have argued that the map as redrawn by state lawmakers was aimed at maintaining traditional guidelines for congressional redistricting, such as keeping together communities of interest. And they have signaled that they hope to sway one of the Supreme Court justices who sided with the majority in June.

The state’s briefs before the three-judge panel referenced a concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – one of the two conservatives who sided with the liberal justices on the high court to vote against the original Alabama map – that questioned whether “race-based redistricting” can “extend indefinitely into the future.”

The lower-court judges weren’t convinced by the state’s arguments.

They wrote that after reviewing the concurrence, as well as a part of the Supreme Court’s ruling which Kavanaugh didn’t join, “We do not understand either of those writings as undermining any aspect of the Supreme Court’s affirmance; if they did, the Court would not have affirmed the injunction.”

The judges also rejected Alabama’s argument that drawing a second Black-majority district would unconstitutionally constitute “affirmative action in redistricting.”

“Unlike affirmative action in the admissions programs the Supreme Court analyzed in [this year’s affirmative action case], which was expressly aimed at achieving balanced racial outcomes in the makeup of the universities’ student bodies, the Voting Rights Act guarantees only ‘equality of opportunity, not a guarantee of electoral success for minority-preferred candidates of whatever race,’” the panel wrote.

“The Voting Rights Act does not provide a leg up for Black voters – it merely prevents them from being kept down with regard to what is arguably the most ‘fundamental political right,’ in that it is ‘preservative of all rights’ – the right to vote.”

Earlier, in a letter to state lawmakers, Marshall had argued that a separate Supreme Court ruling in June – after the high court’s Alabama redistricting decision came down – that ended affirmative action in college admissions meant that using a map in which “race predominates” would open up the state to claims that it was violating the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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August 2, 2023
Conservative justices suggest South Carolina GOP gerrymandering was based on politics, not race | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

The Supreme Court’s conservatives expressed doubt at oral arguments Wednesday that South Carolina GOP lawmakers engaged in impermissible racial gerrymandering when they redrew congressional lines for a House seat to benefit Republicans.

The case is one of several racial and political gerrymandering-related lawsuits that could impact which party controls the House after next year’s congressional elections.

The district at issue was reworked in 2020 to benefit the GOP and current incumbent, Rep. Nancy Mace – one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as House speaker last week.

The South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and a Black voter named Taiwan Scott say the use of race dominated the decision-making process and that the state worked to intentionally dilute the power of Black voters. A federal court agreed, referring to the revised map as “bleaching.”

Several of the conservative justices on Wednesday suggested that map drawers had taken politics into consideration, not race.

Chief Justice John Roberts said those challenging the map had “no direct” evidence that race had predominated in the decisionmaking process. He said that there were no “odd-shaped” districts drawn and that there existed a “wealth of political data” that would justify the chosen boundaries. He said the challengers had only presented “circumstantial evidence” and suggested the court would be “breaking new ground” in its voting jurisprudence if it were to side with them.

Justice Samuel Alito repeatedly suggested that a lower court had made serious legal error in invalidating the map by relying upon erroneous expert testimony. He said the Supreme Court could not “rubber-stamp” the district court’s finding and he noted that the individual charged with drawing the maps had years of experience and had worked for both Democrats and Republicans.

Alito contended that there was “nothing suspicious” if a map drawer is aware of race as long as it is not a predominant factor when drawing lines.

Justice Neil Gorsuch said there was “no evidence ” that the legislature could have achieved its “partisan tile in any other way.”

For their part, the liberals on the court suggested that the Republican-controlled South Carolina Legislature adopted the maps by considering race as a predominant factor, in violation of the equal protection clause of the US Constitution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that Republicans were launching “pot shots” at the experts who claimed the maps could only be explained by race. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the challengers are not required to produce a “smoking gun” to prove their point.

The dispute comes as the justices this year ordered Alabama to redraw its congressional map to account for the states’ 27% Black voting population. That decision, penned by Roberts, came as a welcome relief to liberals who feared that the court was poised to make it harder for minorities to challenge maps under Section 2 of the historic Voting Rights Act. A federal court approved a new map last week that significantly boosts the Black population in a second district, which could lead to the pickup of a Democratic seat next year.

The South Carolina case raises different questions rooted in the Constitution concerning when a state crosses the line between permissible partisan goals and illegal racial discrimination.

The state chapter of the NAACP and Scott are challenging the state’s 1st Congressional District, located along the southeastern coast and anchored in Charleston County. Although the district consistently elected Republicans from 1980 to 2016, in 2018 a Democrat was elected in a political upset.

Two years later a Republican candidate, Mace, regained the seat in a close race. When the state House and Senate began considering congressional reapportionment in 2021, the Republican majorities sought to create a stronger GOP tilt in the district, one of seven in the state. A new map could make the seat more competitive.

After an eight-day trial featuring 42 witnesses and 652 exhibits, a three-judge district court panel in January held that District 1 amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because race was the predominant factor in the district’s reapportionment plan.

“To achieve a target of 17% African American population,” the court said, “Charleston County was racially gerrymandered and over 30,000 African Americans were removed from their home district.” The court referred at one point to the “bleaching” of Black voters out of the Charleston County portion of the district.

“State legislators are free to consider a broad array of factors in the design of a legislative district, including partisanship, but they may not use race as a predominant factor and may not use partisanship as a proxy for race,” the court concluded.

South Carolina Republicans, led by state Senate President Thomas Alexander, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the maps had not been drawn impermissibly based on race, but instead with politics in mind.

The person who devised the map testified in federal court that he was instructed to make the district “more Republican leaning,” but that he did not consider race while drawing the lines. He did, however, acknowledge that he examined racial data after drafting each version and that the Black voting-age population of the district was viewed during the drafting process.

“If left uncorrected, the panel’s holding would place States in an impossible bind by exposing them to potential racial gerrymandering liability whenever they decline to make majority-white, modestly-majority Republican districts majority-Democratic,” argued John Gore, a lawyer for the Republicans.

Mace filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the high court in support of the Republicans, charging that the lower court “ignored one of the most important traditional districting principles – the preservation of the core of existing districts.”

Joined by other GOP members of Congress from South Carolina, Mace argued that constituent services, voter education and the seniority of long-serving members of the House are “vital interests” and that the lower court was “bent on destroying the legislatures’ duly enacted and carefully negotiated map.”

Lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund told the justices in court papers that the state impermissibly used race as a predominant factor when drawing the district.

“Using race as the predominant means to sort voters is unconstitutional even if done for partisan goals,” they argued.

They said the lower court made clear that the state “intentionally exiled more than 30,000 Black Charlestonians from CD1 predominately because of their race.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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August 2, 2023
Here’s what Donald Trump’s return to X could mean for the platform’s business | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
—

Nine months after Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump’s account on the social network previously known as Twitter, the former president has returned to what was once his platform of choice for communicating with the country.

The return of Trump – who used to be one of the site’s most prominent, if controversial, users – could mark a turning point for the company now called X after months of turbulence. Trump, who has nearly 87 million followers, could attract a wide set of viewers, especially in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, where he is the front-runner for the Republican nomination. But it could also present a new set of challenges for the social network, including for its effort to revive its ad business, if Trump decides to resume regularly posting on the platform at all.

Trump on Thursday night posted on the platform for the first time since January 2021, when he was suspended for violating Twitter’s rules against glorification of violence in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. On Thursday, he posted a photo of his mug shot – the first such photo of a US president in history – after his surrender in Georgia on more than a dozen charges stemming from his efforts to reverse the 2020 election results there. He also added a link to a fundraiser.

Trump’s return appeared to be welcomed by X owner Musk, who has been encouraging politicians and public figures to post on the site in a bid to improve user numbers. He shared Trump’s X post saying, “Next-level.” Later, appearing to reference the former president without explicitly naming him, Musk posted that “the speed at which your message on this platform can reach a vast number of people is mind-blowing.”

X declined to comment for this story.

If Trump decides to return to regularly posting on X, it could be a major boon to the platform’s effort to attract an audience as it faces increased competition. In the wake of controversial policy decisions by Musk, a slew of Twitter copycats have popped up as users seek alternative platforms, including Meta’s Threads, which rolled out a key update this week. The week of July 17, traffic to then-Twitter was down more than 9% compared to the same period in the prior year, according to the most recent public report from web traffic intelligence firm Similarweb.

Musk’s changes at the company have also irked some advertisers, weighing on X’s core business.

When he was president, Trump’s posts on what was then Twitter often moved the markets, set the news cycle and drove the agenda in Washington – a fact that benefited the company in the form of countless hours of user engagement and almost certainly could again. And while Trump has remained mostly on his own platform, Truth Social, since he was suspended from many mainstream social networks in early 2021, X would give him a larger reach as he vies for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Trump’s return “should have a positive impact on [X’s] engagement at a time when it needs it,” D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte told CNN in an email Friday.

(It’s not clear how Musk – who has often been X’s main character since his takeover, thanks in some cases to his own policy decisions – would feel about sharing the spotlight.)

That engagement could be a selling point for X in its quest to lure advertisers back to the platform. But Trump’s return could also raise fresh concerns for advertisers, some of whom have pulled back their spending on the platform over fears that their ads could run next to controversial or potentially objectionable content as Musk has reduced content moderation on the site.

Musk said last month that the company still had negative cash flow because of a 50% decline in revenue from its core ad business, although CEO Linda Yaccarino said weeks later the company is now “close to break-even.”

And while X’s leadership has said advertisers are returning thanks to new brand safety controls, at least two brands recently paused their spending on the platform after their ads were run alongside an account celebrating the Nazi party. (X suspended the account after it was flagged and said ad impressions on the page were minimal.)

Trump frequently pushed boundaries when he was active on Twitter. For years, the platform took a light-touch approach to moderating his account, arguing at times that as a public official, the then-president must be given wide latitude to speak. Now, if Trump returns to his old habits – the former president has, for example, continued to falsely claim in posts on Truth Social that the 2020 election was stolen – Musk could be forced to decide whether to risk alienating additional advertisers or compromise his stated commitment to “free speech.”

Forte said he will be closely watching the impact of Trump’s return on Twitter’s advertising business. “The increased engagement should be favorable, but there is a risk that heightened controversy could hamper ad sales,” he said.

And it’s not yet clear whether Trump will actually return to being active on X beyond Thursday’s post, which was essentially a fundraising appeal, and similar to what he posted on Truth Social. After Facebook restored Trump’s account earlier this year, many of his posts on that platform have been aimed at directing users to donate or volunteer for his campaign.

What’s more, after making his return to X, Trump appeared to try to clarify where his loyalty lies. “I LOVE TRUTH SOCIAL. IT IS MY HOME!!” Trump posted on the X competitor platform.

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August 2, 2023
Black creators built TikTok. But Black employees say they experienced ‘toxicity and racism’ | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
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Nnete Matima said she was attracted to work at TikTok because of how the social media platform was “really built upon Black culture” and the work of Black creators.

She saw and welcomed TikTok’s public pledge of support for the Black community in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd and applied to work for the company because she felt its corporate values “really resonated with me,” Matima told CNN.

Shortly after she began working at TikTok-parent company ByteDance last year, however, she alleges she encountered “toxicity and racism” in the workplace. Her manager would refer to her as a “black snake” behind her back and set unrealistic and uneven expectations for her compared to her white peers, Matima claims. The mistreatment only got worse, she said, after she spoke up about it via human resources channels.

Matima is one of two Black former ByteDance employees who together filed a formal complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday. Their complaint asks the agency to investigate alleged racial discrimination and retaliation against Black workers at the social media giant.

Corporate America has long come under fire for racism in the workplace, especially in the wake of the racial reckoning that swept through the nation in 2020. The criticism is especially pointed for technology companies, where having employees with diverse perspectives is especially crucial because tech products have faced accusations of perpetuating racial and ethnic discrimination.

Matima, who is based in New York City, and fellow former employee Joël Carter, who is based in Austin, Texas, alleged in the proposed class action complaint that they each faced repeated instances of discrimination at work and then faced retaliation when they raised concerns about it.

“Rather than holding anyone accountable, TikTok denied the blatant discrimination that Ms. Matima and Mr. Carter suffered, failed to stop it from continuing, engaged in sham ‘investigations’ of their complaints, took away their work, and then terminated Ms. Matima and Mr. Carter in retaliation for complaining about race discrimination and mistreatment,” the complaint states.

“We are asking the EEOC to investigate TikTok’s pattern or practice of retaliation against workers who complain about discrimination,” the complaint adds.

In a statement to CNN on Thursday, a TikTok spokesperson said: “We take employee concerns very seriously, and have strong policies in place that prohibit discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in the workplace. As an organization, we have a strong record of championing diversity and inclusion.”

TikTok skyrocketed in popularity in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and as of this year has amassed more than 150 million American users. As the app has become more entrenched in American culture, it has also faced mounting scrutiny from US lawmakers over perceived security concerns due to its China-based parent company’s ties to Beijing. Talks of an outright US ban of the app have simmered in Washington, DC, since the Trump era but have largely subsided in recent months as lawmakers turn their attention to the rise of generative AI out of Silicon Valley.

Even TikTok itself has also acknowledged the important role that Black users play on the platform — and its need to support them.

“Black creators inspire mainstream culture and continue to define what’s next — from creating viral moments and pioneering new spaces in fashion and music, to advocating for others and organizing for a better future, they have always been at the forefront of innovation,” the company said in a statement last January.

Two years earlier, TikTok had acknowledged concerns that Black users felt “unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed” and vowed to “actively promote and protect” diversity on the platform.

‘Dehumanizing and demoralizing’

Carter, who began working at TikTok in June 2021, told CNN in an interview that experience at the company was “dehumanizing” and “demoralizing.”

Carter was initially hired as a risk analyst responsible for managing the safety of TikTok’s ad ecosystem, but was transferred to the platform’s ad policy team as a policy manager eight months later. Shortly after starting his new role, Carter alleges, he discovered that he was being significantly underpaid compared to his colleagues. He says he raised these concerns to human resources and his department leader. Carter was at the time the only Black employee on his 80-person ad policy team, the complaint states.

Carter’s manager prevented him from attending important meetings and took credit for Carter’s work, according to the complaint. Carter alleges that in response to his complaints, his role at the company “was changed and severely diminished,” prompting him to again alert human resources that he was concerned about discrimination and retaliation.

The complaint filed with the EEOC shares parts of Carter’s April 2022 performance evaluation, where he was given an overall score of: “Exceeds expectations.” A reviewer described Carter as “open and humble above all” and a “great teammate.” He was “happy to provide assistance or guidance whenever needed. He never had an ego and was always open to collaboration and feedback,” the reviewer added, per the complaint.

But after Carter began raising concerns at work about racial discrimination, he alleges he was retaliated against in a performance review in April 2023.

He was labeled as “tense” and “angry” and accused of “slamming doors” in the office in that review, the complaint states. But Carter says he never slammed a door in the office. In fact, he says, the doors at the office were hydraulic — not even capable of being slammed.

Carter told CNN that he felt his managers were trying “to establish this narrative of me about being the ‘angry Black man.’” Carter grew emotional as he talked to CNN about the pain and “the historic significance of using that kind of inflammatory language, especially when it’s unfounded.”

His experience at work deeply impacted his mental health, and for the first time in his life he began seeing a psychiatrist and dealing with symptoms of depression for “months on end,” he said. “It was like overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.”

Matima — who worked in sales for Lark, ByteDance’s workplace communication division — similarly alleges she was treated differently from the colleagues on her team “who were nearly all white,” according to the complaint. For example, Matima says she was not given adequate time to complete required onboarding courses before being asked to start her work, so she had to finish the courses during nights and weekends. By contrast, Matima’s white colleagues “were given ample time during normal work hours to complete their training before they were required to start their sales outreach,” the complaint states.

In January 2023, the complaint alleges, Matima was told by a colleague that her manager and other colleagues “commonly referred” to her as a “black snake.”

“This outrageous ‘black snake’ nickname was not only racially derogatory and inflammatory, but also suggested that Ms. Matima is a deceitful, untrustworthy, and sneaky person,” the complaint states.

Matima and Carter both allege that multiple requests to switch managers were denied and that their complaints to the company’s human resources department were not adequately investigated and managed.

Both Matima and Carter were ultimately terminated by TikTok in August.

Now Matima says she feels a “moral obligation” to share the experiences publicly. “When there is injustice happening, it festers in the dark and the shadows,” she said. “By going public, we can inspire others who are still suffering in there to stand up and speak out.”

Are you a current for former employee of TikTok or ByteDance and have information to share about what it’s like to work there? Learn how to reach out journalists securely: https://www.cnn.com/tips/

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August 2, 2023
EU launches probe into disinformation campaigns as X says ‘hundreds’ of Hamas-affiliated accounts removed | CNN Business

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CNN
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X says it has removed “hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts” and taken down thousands of posts since the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group, even as the European Commission formally opened an investigation into X after a previous warning about disinformation and illegal content on its platform linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

The platform, formerly known as Twitter, was given 24 hours by the European Union earlier this week to address illegal content and disinformation regarding the conflict or face penalties under the bloc’s recently enacted Digital Services Act.

CEO Linda Yaccarino responded to EU official Thierry Breton in a letter dated Wednesday that she posted to X. She said the company had “redistributed resources and refocused internal teams who are working around the clock to address this rapidly evolving situation.”

“There is no place on X for terrorist organizations or violent extremist groups and we continue to remove such accounts in real time,” Yaccarino wrote.

“X is… addressing identified fake and manipulated content during this constantly evolving and shifting crisis,” she added. The platform had “assembled a leadership group to assess the situation” shortly after news broke about the attack, Yaccarino said.

European Union officials are now assessing X’s compliance with the DSA and have asked the company to start responding to investigators by as early as Oct. 18.

The probe covers X’s “policies and practices regarding notices on illegal content, complaint handling, risk assessment and measures to mitigate the risks identified,” the Commission said in a release.

“X is required to comply with the full set of provisions introduced by the DSA since late August 2023,” the release added, “including the assessment and mitigation of risks related to the dissemination of illegal content, disinformation, gender-based violence, and any negative effects on the exercise of fundamental rights, rights of the child, public security and mental well-being.”

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Beyond X, European officials have sent similar warnings to Meta and TikTok in recent days.

The announcement did not name the Israel-Hamas war. But this week, EU officials sent a letter to X owner Elon Musk warning that if an investigation finds that the company had failed to meet its legal obligations in connection with content about the war, it could face steep penalties, including billions in fines.

A slew of mischaracterized videos and other posts went viral on X over the weekend, alarming experts who track the spread of misinformation and offering the latest example of social media platforms’ struggle to deal with a flood of falsehoods during a major geopolitical event.

Since the attack on Israel, Yaccarino said X had acted to “remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content” that break its rules on violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media. It had also responded to more than 80 “take down requests” from EU authorities to remove content.

“Community Notes” — which allow X users to fact check false posts — are visible on “thousands of posts, generating millions of impressions,” she wrote.

According to Yaccarino, notes related to the conflict take about five hours on average to show up after a post is created, a revelation that could fuel concerns that fake or manipulated content is being seen by thousands — or in some cases millions — of people before being moderated.

The DSA is one of the most ambitious efforts by policymakers anywhere to regulate tech giants and companies face billions in fines for violating the act.

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August 2, 2023
House Oversight Committee launches investigation into Coast Guard after CNN report | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The House Oversight Committee has launched an investigation into the US Coast Guard’s “mishandling of serious misconduct” — including sexual assault, racism and hazing — after CNN exposed that its leaders concealed reports documenting those problems from its workforce, the public and Congress.

The inquiry is the latest in a string of government probes announced in the wake of CNN’s reporting, which revealed the existence of a yearslong investigation that found rapes and other sexual abuse at the Coast Guard Academy had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials. Dubbed “Operation Fouled Anchor,” the internal probe was kept confidential by Coast Guard leaders for years until CNN started making inquiries into the report earlier this year.

Last week, CNN exposed that Coast Guard leaders suppressed yet another report, this time a “Culture of Respect” review from April 2015, that documented racial and gender discrimination and assault across the service.

In a letter sent Friday to the Coast Guard’s leader, Commandant Linda Fagan, House lawmakers lambasted the agency, saying that the Coast Guard “may have obstructed the ability of Congress to carry out constitutionally mandated oversight authority and legislation to address these issues,” “prevented actionable change within the agency” and “likely put more people at risk.”

“[The Coast Guard] only notified Congress about Operation Fouled Anchor and its April 2015 Report when existence of these reports was going to be in the press,” wrote committee Chairman Rep. James Comer and Rep. Glenn Grothman, chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. “The Committee has serious concerns that congressional committees would not have been notified of these reports, and the serious allegations contained within them, if it had not been for the threat of public reporting.”

The announcement comes on the heels of the Coast Guard’s own acknowledgment of past failures in a rare and highly critical internal report issued this week that also orders a series of changes to how the agency handles sexual assault. A number of congressional lawmakers and assault survivors were not satisfied, however, saying the agency still needs to hold past perpetrators and the leaders who covered up their dangerous and criminal behavior accountable – rather than only looking to the future.

The committee requested a litany of documents and information “to assist the Committee in investigating these reports, the withholding of information from Congress, and the inaction of senior leadership to combat misconduct,” including a list of Coast Guard officials involved in the handling of sexual misconduct cases from the time of Fouled Anchor to present.

CNN’s reporting showed that, over the years, alleged perpetrators weren’t being held accountable for misconduct. Many of the problems documented in the Coast Guard’s reports continue to plague the agency, according to interviews with current and former service members.

Meanwhile, a probe by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General remains ongoing, as does a Senate inquiry – with a hearing scheduled next week where multiple whistleblowers and survivors of sexual assault and harassment will testify.

Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.

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August 2, 2023
What happened this week and what’s next in Trump legal world | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Donald Trump’s legal schedule is getting fuller by the day as the political season heats up, with the former president facing multiple criminal charges with more possibly on the way.

This week, Trump was indicted on charges of leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat and had to travel to Washington, DC, to plead not guilty in federal court.

Now comes a flurry of legal filings and the possibility of yet another indictment, this time in Georgia, where a grand jury is looking at efforts to flip his defeat in the Peach State.

READ: Tracking the criminal indictments in one place

Here’s what happened this week and what’s next:

Special counsel Jack Smith dropped the hammer against Trump on Tuesday, charging the former president with conspiracy and attempting to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory. That effort ultimately led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

“(F)or more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” the indictment states.

“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false,” it adds, referring to Trump. “But the defendant disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

READ: CNN’s annotation of the indictment

Trump took the short trip from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club to appear in federal court on Thursday to enter a not guilty plea to all charges.

The arraignment was at a courthouse that’s been central to the efforts to hold people accountable for the January 6 riot. Over 1,000 people charged in Capitol riot cases have made a similar appearance as Trump’s – the building is located within sight of the Capitol and judges there have overseen trials or sentencing of the rioters.

One of the next major issues in the Trump case will be when to set a trial date. Judge Tanya Chutkan – who has sentenced multiple rioters – appears to be moving quickly on that front.

The Trump team signaled Thursday that it doesn’t think this case can be sent to trial in the normal timeline as dictated under a federal law known the Speedy Trial Act that allows for exemptions in certain circumstance. The special counsel’s office disagrees.

Trump has until Tuesday to file a motion that would pause the clock under the Speedy Trial Act, which would help to slow the pace down, and prosecutors have until August 13 to issue any objection to the request.

Another critical filing will be next Thursday, when the special counsel must propose a trial date and say how long it will likely take them to put on their case before the jury. Trump must respond by August 17.

The next hearing – the first before Chutkan – will be August 28. Trump does not have to appear in person.

Meanwhile, the first Republican primary debate is August 23, though it’s unclear if Trump will participate.

Meanwhile, Smith’s indictment cites six unnamed co-conspirators who allegedly worked with Trump to support his efforts. CNN can identify five of the six.

“Co-Conspirator 1” is former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “2” is former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who masterminded the plan to appoint false electors and is now facing disbarment proceedings in California. “3” is former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who worked with Giuliani in court. “4” is former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump at one point hoped to install as acting attorney general to help him overturn the election. “5” is pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who sent an email to Giuliani about the fake electors plot.

The identity of “6” is unclear. The indictment says this person is a political consultant who is tied to the fake elector slate in Pennsylvania.

The next moment in the criminal case against Trump is Thursday, August 10, when a magistrate judge in Florida will hear the plea of Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, who allegedly attempted to delete security camera footage at the former president’s resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for it.

Trump, via court filing Friday, pleaded not guilty to the charges recently added to the case and indicated to the court that he would not be physically present for the arraignment.

Lawyers for co-defendant Walt Nauta will be present to enter their client’s plea to the new counts.

READ: Mar-a-lago indictment annotated

A grand jury hearing evidence in Smith’s investigation returned the superseding indictment in late July against Trump, who had already faced 37 criminal charges, charging the former president with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

Also next week, Trump’s lawyers will have a chance to respond to claims by prosecutors that he is unwilling to travel to a secured facility to access classified documents being turned over to the defense for the case. By August 10, Trump will have to respond to Smith’s proposal for a protective order restricting access to classified discovery in the case, and in the filings with the proposal, prosecutors have said that Trump has requested to view the documents in Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster – a request Smith’s team opposes.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to ask a grand jury to file charges by September 1 in her probe into efforts by Trump and allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result.

“The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

Security at the Fulton County courthouse has notably increased in anticipation of Willis’ actions.

READ: Timeline of Trump’s efforts in Georgia to overturn the election

A federal judge last week dismissed a $475 million defamation lawsuit Trump brought against CNN that accused the network of defaming him by using the phrase “the big lie” and allegedly comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

District Judge Raag Singhal, a 2019 appointee of Trump’s, said that use of the phrase or similar statements are opinion that don’t meet the standard for defamation.

“CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference,” Singhal wrote.

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August 2, 2023
Cassidy Hutchinson defends herself in first post-testimony TV interview | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide who delivered bombshell testimony to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, defended the anecdotes she recounted under oath in her first TV interview since her Capitol Hill testimony.

“What would I have to gain by coming forward? It would have been easier for me to continue being complicit and to stay in the comfortable zone,” Hutchinson said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”

CBS also reported that Hutchinson had testified to grand juries in Fulton County, Georgia, and Washington, DC, about the 2020 election aftermath, but noted it’s unclear how substantial that testimony was in forming the criminal cases now filed against former President Donald Trump.

Hutchinson recounted that an attorney she initially worked with, who had been provided through Trump’s political connections and money, had made clear to her the less she recalled to House investigators, the better. She answered several questions in her initial interviews – before switching attorneys – with “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall,” but it “was information I very clearly recalled.”

Her testimony last year revealed that Trump was aware of the potential for violence on January 6, 2021, but forged ahead with his attempts to rile up his supporters.

Hutchinson also testified that she had heard a secondhand account that Trump was so enraged at his Secret Service detail for blocking him from going to the Capitol on January 6 that he lunged to the front of his presidential limo and tried to turn the wheel.

Secret Service agent Bobby Engel, whom Hutchinson said witnessed the incident, and then-White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato, whom she said she heard the story from, have both said they don’t remember it.

But Hutchinson told CBS, “I know what I recall. … I stand by what I testified to,” while noting it is possible that Engel and Ornato don’t remember the incident.

CNN’s Jake Tapper will sit down with Hutchinson for an interview that will air Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET on “The Lead.” Hutchinson’s public appearances come ahead of the release of her upcoming book “Enough.”

In an excerpt from the book that was first reported by The Guardian and confirmed by CNN, Hutchinson claims that Rudy Giuliani groped her on January 6, 2021, as they stood backstage during a rally that preceded the US Capitol attack.

Hutchinson writes that Giuliani put his hands “under my blazer, then my skirt” at the January 6 rally. Giuliani’s political adviser has slammed the claim as a “disgusting lie.” CBS reported that Hutchinson and her publisher stand by the story.

Hutchinson said on Sunday that she has been “coming out of hiding” and going out in “limited capacities” partly for security reasons since coming forward as a witness against Trump.

The former White House aide revealed that she sought guidance from the story of Alexander Butterfield, who testified during the Watergate hearings, and has thanked him in person. Bob Woodward’s book on Butterfield, she said, showed her “not only that I could do this, but that there was life on the other side of it.”

Since her nearly two-hour testimony, Hutchinson has defended what she said in front of the committee and in recorded depositions amid pushback from Trump allies.

Hutchinson has also cooperated with Georgia prosecutors investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. It is one of the four cases in which the former president has been indicted.

As for 2024, Hutchinson said she wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. “He is dangerous for the country,” she told CBS.

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August 2, 2023
Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro convicted of contempt of Congress | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former Donald Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro has been convicted of contempt of Congress for not complying to a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Navarro is the second ex-aide to the former president to be prosecuted for his lack of cooperation with the committee. Steve Bannon was convicted last year on two contempt counts. Bannon’s case is currently on appeal.

Navarro pledged to appeal based on executive privilege issues.

“We knew going in what the verdict was going to be. That is why this is going to the appeals court,” he told reporters outside the courthouse. “And we feel – look, I said from the beginning this is going to the Supreme Court. I said from the beginning I’m willing to go to prison to settle this issue, I’m willing to do that.”

Hear from ex-Trump aide after guilty of contempt verdict

Asked by CNN if he’s spoken with the former president or reached out for help on legal bills, Navarro called Trump “a rock,” but did not elaborate on any communications.

“President Trump has been a rock in terms of assistance. We talk when we need to talk,” Navarro said. “He will win the presidential race in 2024, in November. You know why? Because the people are tired of Joe Biden weaponizing courts like this and the Department of Justice.”

After the verdict was read, Navarro’s lawyers sought a mistrial, raising concerns about any influence alleged protestors may have had when jurors took a break outdoors Thursday afternoon. US District Judge Amit Mehta did not immediately rule on the motion.

The judge scheduled Navarro’s sentencing for January 12, 2024.

Tim Mulvey, former spokesperson for House January 6 committee, celebrated the verdict.

“His defiance of the committee was brazen. Like the other witnesses who attempted to stonewall the committee, he thought he was above the law. He isn’t. That’s a good thing for the rule of law. I imagine that those under indictment right now are getting a good reminder of that right now,” Mulvey told CNN in a statement.

Prosecutors told the jury during closing arguments Thursday that Navarro “made a choice” not to comply with a February 2022 subpoena.

Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Aloi said that government only works if people play by the rules and are held accountable if they don’t.

“The subpoena – it is not hard to understand,” she said, adding that Navarro knew “what he was required to do and when he was required to do it.”

Navarro’s attorney Stanley Woodward contested the idea that the subpoena was simple, staying that the subpoena did not specify where in the Capitol complex Navarro was supposed to show up for his deposition.

He also said that prosecutors failed to prove that Navarro was willful in his failure to comply with the subpoena, arguing that prosecutors hadn’t established that his non-compliance with the demand for testimony was not the result of a mistake or accident.

“Why didn’t the government present evidence to you about where Dr. Navarro was or what he was doing” on the day of the scheduled deposition, Woodward asked the jury. “Something stinks.”

Prosecutor John Crabb responded: “Who cares where he was. What matters is where he wasn’t.”

Crabb repeatedly referred to Navarro as “that man’ while pointing to him, telling the jury at one point, “that man thinks he is above the law.”

The gestures elicited strong reactions from Navarro, who at times threw up his hand, shook his head or laughed. Woodward eventually jumped up and whispered to his client, and the two stood quietly together for the remainder of the proceeding.

The jury was attentive during closing arguments, watching carefully as lawyers presented their final case. Navarro stood directly across the room with his hands clasped and stared at jurors intently.

After the jury was dismissed, Woodward told the judge that the defense was seeking a mistrial because they had learned the jury had taken an outdoor break shortly before rendering the verdict and that during that break, they were around a “number” of January 6-related protestors demonstrating and chanting outside of the court.

“It’s obvious the jury would have heard those protestors,” Woodward said. “It’s impossible for us to know what influence that would have” on their verdict.

Crabb challenged the idea that there were protestors in the park next to the courthouse where the jurors took their break. Woodward countered that Navarro himself had been “accosted” earlier in the day by a protestor when he was coming through that park.

Mehta said he knew that jurors had asked to take their break outside, where they were accompanied by a court security officer, but that he was not aware that protestors were in the park. He told Woodward that he was not going to rule on the mistrial request without receiving more briefing and evidence.

Navarro was briefly interrupted by protesters when he left the courthouse after the verdict was read Thursday.

It’s a “sad day for America, not ‘cause … they were guilty verdicts, because I can’t come out and have an honest, decent conversation with the people of America,” Navarro said.

“People of America, I want you to understand that this is the problem we have right here – this kind of divide in our country between the woke Marxist left and everybody else here. And this is nuts,” he added.

Navarro joined the Trump White House to advise on trade and became a well-known face of the Trump administration, while earning a reputation for sparring behind the scenes with his White House colleagues.

He played a prominent role in the administration’s Covid-19 response as well. He led some of the efforts to speed up the deployment of medical supplies and also was a defender of fringe Trump views about the virus, including the former president’s advocacy of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine.

Navarro was still working at the White House in the period after the 2020 election and lost a pre-trial fight to argue to the jury that Trump asserted an executive privilege that shielded him from the subpoena, and he and his attorneys have signaled that, if convicted, he will raise that and other legal issues on appeal.

“So today’s ‘Judgment Day,’” Navarro told reporters as he walked into the courthouse Thursday.

“I have been stripped, stripped of virtually every defense by the court and yet there is some defense left and the reality here is the government has not proved his case,” he said. “Please understand that the Biden-weaponized Department of Justice is the biggest law firm in the world. That’s what I’m fighting against.”

The trial itself moved forward this week with notable speed and simplicity. It took less than a day for the jury to hear all the evidence in the case.

Prosecutors put just three witnesses on the stand, all former staff members of the House January 6 committee. The Justice Department used their testimony to make the case that the committee had good reason to subpoena Navarro and that he was informed repeatedly of its demands.

In her closing argument, prosecutor Aloi told the jury that Navarro “had knowledge about a plan to delay the activities of Congress on January 6.”

“The defendant was more than happy to share that knowledge” in television interviews and in other public remarks, Aloi said, “except to the congressional committee that could do something about” preventing a future attack.

Woodward sought to paint the mention about the attack on the Capitol and the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power as a distraction.

“This case is not about what happened on January 6,” Woodward said in his closing argument.

Navarro’s defense team engaged in only brief cross examination, questioning just one of the government’s witnesses. His lawyers were focused on the element of the charge that requires a showing that Navarro was willful and deliberate in his decision not to comply with the subpoena – meaning that his lack of compliance was not the result of an inadvertent mistake or accident.

The defense did not put on any witnesses of their own, having abandoned a plan to call an FBI agent who worked on the Justice Department probe into Navarro for questioning on the lack of DOJ investigating into Navarro’s whereabouts on the day his committee deposition was scheduled.

Navarro’s service as a Trump White House aide has generated continuing legal troubles for the former trade adviser – troubles that go beyond the criminal case.

The Justice Department brought a civil lawsuit against him to obtain government records from Navarro’s personal email account that were withheld from the National Archives upon his departure from government. He has appealed the ruling against him in that case.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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August 2, 2023
Takeaways from the second Republican presidential debate | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The second 2024 Republican presidential primary debate ended just as it began: with former President Donald Trump – who hasn’t yet appeared alongside his rivals onstage – as the party’s dominant front-runner.

The seven GOP contenders in Wednesday night’s showdown at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California provided a handful of memorable moments, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley unloading what often seemed like the entire field’s pent-up frustration with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” she said to him at one point.

Two candidates criticized Trump’s absence, as well. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was “missing in action.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the former president “Donald Duck” and said he “hides behind his golf clubs” rather than defending his record on stage.

Chris Christie takes up debate time to send Trump a clear message

The GOP field also took early shots at President Joe Biden. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said Biden, rather than joining the striking auto workers’ union on the picket line Tuesday in Michigan, should be on the southern border. Former Vice President Mike Pence said Biden should be “on the unemployment line.” North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Biden was interfering with “free markets.”

However, what played out in the debate, hosted by Fox Business Network and Univision, is unlikely to change the trajectory of a GOP race in which Trump has remained dominant in national and early-state polling.

And the frequently messy, hard-to-track crosstalk could have led many viewers to tune out entirely.

Here are takeaways from the second GOP primary debate:

Trump might have played it safe by skipping the debates and taking a running-as-an-incumbent approach to the 2024 GOP primary.

It’s hard to see, though, how he would pay a significant price in the eyes of the party’s voters for missing Wednesday night’s messy engagement.

Trump’s rivals took a few shots at him. DeSantis knocked him for deficit spending. Christie mocked him during the night’s early moments, calling him “Donald Duck” for skipping the debate and then in his final comments said he would vote Trump off the GOP island.

“This guy has not only divided our party – he’s divided families all over this country. He’s divided friends all over this country,” Christie said. “He needs to be voted off the island and he needs to be taken out of this process.”

However, Trump largely escaped serious scrutiny of his four years in the Oval Office from a field of rivals courting voters who have largely positive views of his presidency.

“Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

The second GOP primary debate was beset by interruptions, crosstalk and protracted squabbles between the candidates and moderators over speaking time.

That’s tough for viewers trying to make sense of it all but even worse for these candidates as they attempted to stand out as viable alternatives to the absentee Trump.

Further complicating the matter, some of the highest polling candidates after Trump – DeSantis and Haley – were among those least willing to dive into the muck, especially during the crucial first hour. The moderators repeatedly tried to clear the road for the Florida governor, at least in the beginning. But he was all but absent from the proceedings for the first 15 minutes.

Ramaswamy fared somewhat better, speaking louder – and faster – than most of his rivals. But he was bogged down repeatedly when caught between his own talking points and cross-volleys of criticisms from frustrated candidates like Scott.

The moderator group will likely get criticism for losing control of the room within the first half-hour, but even a messy debate tells voters something about the people taking part.

All night, Scott seemed like he was looking for a fight with somebody and he finally got that when he set his sights on fellow South Carolinian Haley.

He began his line of attack – which Haley interjected with a “Bring it” – by accusing her of spending $50,000 on curtains in a $15 million subsidized location during her time as the US ambassador to the United Nations.

What ensued was the two Republicans going back and forth about the curtains. “Do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those curtains,” Haley said, while Scott repeated, “Did you send them back? Did you send them back?” Haley then responded: “Did you send them back? You’re the one who works in Congress.”

It wasn’t the most acrimonious moment of the night, but it was up there. The feuding between the two South Carolina natives seemed deep, but it’s worth remembering that about a decade ago, when Haley was governor, she appointed Scott to the Senate seat he currently holds after Republican Jim DeMint stepped down. That confidence in Scott seems to have dissolved in this presidential race.

Confronted by his Republican competitors for the first time in earnest, DeSantis delivered an uneven performance from the center of the stage – a spot that is considerably less secure than it was heading into the first debate in Milwaukee.

Despite rules that allowed candidates to respond if they were invoked, DeSantis let Fox slip to commercial break when Pence seemed to blame the governor for a jury decision to award a life sentence, not the death penalty, to the mass murderer in the Parkland high school shooting. (DeSantis opposed the decision and championed a law that made Florida the state with the lowest threshold to put someone on death row going forward.) Nor did he respond when Pence accused DeSantis of inflating Florida’s budget by 30% during his tenure.

He later let Scott get the last word on Florida’s Black history curriculum standards and struggled to defend himself when Haley – accurately – pointed out that he took steps to block fracking in Florida on his second day in office.

Before the first debate in Milwaukee, a top strategist for a pro-DeSantis super PAC told donors that “79% of the people tonight are going to watch the debate and turn it off after 19 minutes.”

By that measure, the Florida governor managed to first speak Wednesday night just in the nick of time – 16 minutes into the debate. And when he finally spoke, he continued the sharper attacks on the GOP front-runner that he has previewed in recent weeks.

DeSantis equated Trump’s absence in California to Biden, who DeSantis said was “completely missing in action for leadership” on the economy, blaming him for inflation and the autoworkers strike.

“And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing in action,” DeSantis said. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.”

But DeSantis then largely pulled back from further targeting Trump – until a post-debate Fox News appearance when he challenged the former president to a one-on-one face-off.

DeSantis ended the debate on a strong note. He took charge by rejecting moderator Dana Perino’s attempts to get the candidates to vote one of their competitors “off the island.” He ended his night forcefully dismissing a suggestion that Trump’s lead in the polls held meaning in September.

“Polls don’t elect presidents, voters elect presidents,” he said, before pointing a finger at Trump for Republicans’ electoral underperformance in the last three elections.

But as the super PAC strategist previously pointed out: By then, who was watching?

In the final minutes of the debate, co-host Ilia Calderón of Univision asked Pence how he would reach out to those Latino voters who felt the Republican Party was hostile or didn’t care about them.

“I’m incredibly proud of the tax cut and tax reform bill,” he said, referring to Republicans’ sweeping 2017 tax law. He also cited low unemployment rates for Hispanic Americans recorded during the Trump-Pence administration.

Scott, faced with the same question, said it was important to lead by example. “My chief of staff is the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate,” he said. “I hired her because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.”

Calderón focused much of her time on a series of policy questions that highlighted the candidates’ records on immigration and gun violence. At times, some of them struggled to respond directly.

She asked Pence if he would work with Congress to find a permanent solution for people who were brought to the country illegally as children. The Trump-Pence administration ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gave those young people protected status. She repeated the question after Pence focused his answer on his work securing the border. He then talked about his time in Congress.

“Let me tell you, I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer,” he said. “But you know, something I’ve done different than everybody on this stage is I’ve actually secured reform in Congress.”

The candidates – and moderators – shy away from abortion talk

It took more than a 100 minutes on Wednesday night for the first question on abortion to be asked.

About five minutes later, the conversation had moved on. What is potentially the most potent driver (or flipper) of votes in the coming election was afforded less time than TikTok.

Tellingly, no one onstage seemed to mind.

Perino introduced the subject by asking DeSantis whether some Republicans were right to worry that the electoral backlash to abortion bans – or the prospect of their passage – would handicap the eventual GOP nominee.

DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in April, dismissed those concerns, pointing to his success in traditionally liberal parts of Florida on his way to winning a second term in 2022. Then he swiped at Trump for calling the new laws “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

Christie took a similar path, arguing that his two terms as governor of New Jersey, a traditionally blue state, showed it was possible for anti-abortion leaders to win in a environments supportive of abortion rights.

And with that, the abortion “debate” in Simi Valley ended abruptly. No more questions and no attempts by the rest of the candidates to interject or otherwise join the chat.

Candidates pile on Ramaswamy

Some of the candidates onstage didn’t want to have a repeat of the first debate, in which Ramaswamy managed to stand out as a formidable debater and showman.

Early in Wednesday’s debate, Scott went after the tech entrepreneur, saying his business record included ties to the Chinese Communist Party and money going to Hunter Biden. The visibly annoyed Ramaswamy shifted gears from praising all the other candidates onstage to defending his business record. But Scott and Ramaswamy ended up talking over each other.

A little later on Pence began an answer with a knock on Ramaswamy, saying, “I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in China.” At another point after Ramaswamy had responded to a question about his use of TikTok, Haley jumped in, saying, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber from what you say” and then going on to say, “We can’t trust you. We can’t trust you.” As Ramaswamy tried to readopt his unity tone, Scott could be heard trying to interrupt him.

Despite the efforts of moderators to pin them down, DeSantis and Pence struggled to respond when challenged on their respective records on health care.

Asked about the Trump administration’s failure to end the Affordable Care Act as promised, Pence opted instead to answer a previous question about mass gun violence. When Perino pushed Pence one more time to explain why Obamacare remains not just intact but popular, the former vice president once again demurred.

Fox’s Stuart Varney similarly pressed DeSantis to explain why 2.5 million Floridians don’t have health insurance.

DeSantis found a familiar foil for Republicans in California: inflation. Varney, though, said it didn’t explain why Florida has one of the highest uninsurance rates in the country, to which DeSantis had little response.

“Our state’s a dynamic state,” DeSantis said, before pointing to Florida’s population boom and the low level of welfare benefits offered there.

Haley, though, appeared ready to debate health care, arguing for transparency in prices to lessen the power of insurance companies and providers and overhauling lawsuit rules to make it harder to sue doctors.

“How can we be the best country in the world and have the most expensive health care in the world?” Haley said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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August 2, 2023
The Israel-Hamas war reveals how social media sells you the illusion of reality | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
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As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the end of its first week, millions have turned to platforms including TikTok and Instagram in hopes of comprehending the brutal conflict in real time. Trending search terms on TikTok in recent days illustrate the hunger for frontline perspectives: From “graphic Israel footage” to “live stream in Israel right now,” internet users are seeking out raw, unfiltered accounts of a crisis they are desperate to understand.

For the most part, they are succeeding, discovering videos of tearful Israeli children wrestling with the permanence of death alongside images of dazed Gazans sitting in the rubble of their former homes. But that same demand for an intimate view of the war has created ample openings for disinformation peddlers, conspiracy theorists and propaganda artists — malign influences that regulators and researchers now warn pose a dangerous threat to public debates about the war.

One recent TikTok video, seen by more than 300,000 users and reviewed by CNN, promoted conspiracy theories about the origins of the Hamas attacks, including false claims that they were orchestrated by the media. Another, viewed more than 100,000 times, shows a clip from the video game “Arma 3” with the caption, “The war of Israel.” (Some users in the comments of that video noted they had seen the footage circulating before — when Russia invaded Ukraine.)

TikTok is hardly alone. One post on X, formerly Twitter, was viewed more than 20,000 times and flagged as misleading by London-based social media watchdog Reset for purporting to show Israelis staging civilian deaths for cameras. Another X post the group flagged, viewed 55,000 times, was an antisemitic meme featuring Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has been appropriated by far-right white supremacists. On Instagram, a widely shared and viewed video of parachuters dropping in on a crowd and captioned “imagine attending a music festival when Hamas parachutes in” was debunked over the weekend and, in fact, showed unrelated parachute jumpers in Egypt. (Instagram later labeled the video as false.)

This week, European Union officials sent warnings to TikTok, Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta, YouTube and X, highlighting reports of misleading or illegal content about the war on their platforms and reminding the social media companies they could face billions of dollars in fines if an investigation later determines they violated EU content moderation laws. US and UK lawmakers have also called on those platforms to ensure they are enforcing their rules against hateful and illegal content.

Since the violence in Israel began, Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the social media watchdog group Center for Countering Digital Hate, told CNN his group has tracked a spike in efforts to pollute the information ecosystem surrounding the conflict.

“Getting information from social media is likely to lead to you being severely disinformed,” said Ahmed.

Everyone from US foreign adversaries to domestic extremists to internet trolls and “engagement farmers” has been exploiting the war on social media for their own personal or political gain, he added.

“Bad actors surrounding us have been manipulating, confusing and trying to create deception on social media platforms,” Dan Brahmy, CEO of the Israeli social media threat intelligence firm Cyabra, said Thursday in a video posted to LinkedIn. “If you are not sure of the trustworthiness [of content] … do not share,” he said.

‘Upticks in Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives’

Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, told CNN his team has witnessed a similar phenomenon. The trend includes a wave of first-party terrorist propaganda, content depicting graphic violence, misleading and outright false claims, and hate speech – particularly “upticks in specific and general Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives.”

Much of the most extreme content, he said, has been circulating on Telegram, the messaging app with few content moderation controls and a format that facilitates quick and efficient distribution of propaganda or graphic material to a large, dedicated audience. But in much the same way that TikTok videos are frequently copied and rebroadcast on other platforms, content shared on Telegram and other more fringe sites can easily find a pipeline onto mainstream social media or draw in curious users from major sites. (Telegram didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Schools in Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States this week urged parents to delete their children’s social media apps over concerns that Hamas will broadcast or disseminate disturbing videos of hostages who have been seized in recent days. Photos of dead or bloodied bodies, including those of children, have already spread across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X this week.

And tech watchdog group Campaign for Accountability on Thursday released a report identifying several accounts on X sharing apparent propaganda videos with Hamas iconography or linking to official Hamas websites. Earlier in the week, X faced criticism for videos unrelated to the war being presented as on-the-ground footage and for a post from owner Elon Musk directing users to follow accounts that previously shared misinformation (Musk’s post was later deleted, and the videos were labeled using X’s “community notes” feature.)

Some platforms are in a better position to combat these threats than others. Widespread layoffs across the tech industry, including at some social media companies’ ethics and safety teams, risk leaving the platforms less prepared at a critical moment, misinformation experts say. Much of the content related to the war is also spreading in Arabic and Hebrew, testing the platforms’ capacity to moderate non-English content, where enforcement has historically been less robust than in English-language content.

Sharing stuff that you’re not sure about is not helping people, it’s actually really harming them and it contributes to an overall sense that no one can trust what they’re seeing.”

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate

“Of course, platforms have improved over the years. Communication & info sharing mechanisms exist that did not in years past. But they have also never been tested like this,” Brian Fishman, the co-founder of trust and safety platform Cinder who formerly led Facebook’s counterterrorism efforts, said Wednesday in a post on Threads. “Platforms that kept strong teams in place will be pushed to the limit; platforms that did not will be pushed past it.”

Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, said in a letter Wednesday to the European Commission that the platform has “identified and removed hundreds of Hamas-related accounts” and is working with several third-party groups to prevent terrorist content from spreading. “We’ve diligently taken proactive actions to remove content that violates our policies, including: violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media,” she said. The European Commission on Thursday formally opened an investigation into X following its earlier warning about disinformation and illegal content linked to the war.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that since Hamas’ initial attacks, the company has established “a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation. Our teams are working around the clock to keep our platforms safe, take action on content that violates our policies or local law, and coordinate with third-party fact checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation. We’ll continue this work as this conflict unfolds.”

YouTube, for its part, says its teams have removed thousands of videos since the attack began, and continues to monitor for hate speech, extremism, graphic imagery and other content that violates its policies. The platform is also surfacing almost entirely videos from mainstream news organizations in searches related to the war.

Snapchat told CNN that its misinformation team is closely watching content coming out of the region, making sure it is within the platform’s community guidelines, which prohibits misinformation, hate speech, terrorism, graphic violence and extremism.

TikTok did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Large tech platforms are now subject to content-related regulation under a new EU law called the Digital Services Act, which requires them to prevent the spread of mis- and disinformation, address rabbit holes of algorithmically recommended content and avoid possible harms to user mental health. But in such a contentious moment, platforms that take too heavy a hand in moderation could risk backlash and accusations of bias from users.

Platforms’ algorithms and business models — which generally rely on the promotion of content most likely to garner significant engagement — can aid bad actors who design content to capitalize on that structure, Ahmed said. Other product choices, such as X’s moves to allow any user to pay for a subscription for a blue “verification” checkmark that grants an algorithmic boost to post visibility, and to remove the headlines from links to news articles, can further manipulate how users perceive a news event.

“It’s time to break the emergency glass,” Ahmed said, calling on platforms to “switch off the engagement-driven algorithms.” He added: “Disinformation factories are going to cause geopolitical instability and put Jews and Muslims at harm in the coming weeks.”

Even as social media companies work to hide the absolute worst content from their users — whether out of a commitment to regulation, advertisers’ brand safety concerns, or their own editorial judgments — users’ continued appetite for gritty, close-up dispatches from Israelis and Palestinians on the ground is forcing platforms to walk a fine line.

“Platforms are caught in this demand dynamic where users want the latest and the most granular, or the most ‘real’ content or information about events, including terrorist attacks,” Brookie said.

The dynamic simultaneously highlights the business models of social media and the role the companies play in carefully calibrating their users’ experiences. The very algorithms that are widely criticized elsewhere for serving up the most outrageous, polarizing and inflammatory content are now the same ones that, in this situation, appear to be giving users exactly what they want.

But closeness to a situation is not the same thing as authenticity or objectivity, Ahmed and Brookie said, and the wave of misinformation flooding social media right now underscores the dangers of conflating them.

Despite giving the impression of reality and truthfulness, Brookie said, individual stories and combat footage conveyed through social media often lack the broader perspective and context that journalists, research organizations and even social media moderation teams apply to a situation to help achieve a fuller understanding of it.

“It’s my opinion that users can interact with the world as it is — and understand the latest, most accurate information from any given event — without having to wade through, on an individual basis, all of the worst possible content about that event,” Brookie said.

Potentially exacerbating the messy information ecosystem is a culture on social media platforms that often encourages users to bear witness to and share information about the crisis as a way of signaling their personal stance, whether or not they are deeply informed. That can lead even well-intentioned users to unwittingly share misleading information or highly emotional content created with the intention of collecting views or monetizing highly engaging content.

“Be very cautious about sharing in the middle of a major world event,” Ahmed said. “There are people trying to get you to share bullsh*t, lies, which are designed to inculcate you to hate or to misinform you. And so sharing stuff that you’re not sure about is not helping people, it’s actually really harming them and it contributes to an overall sense that no one can trust what they’re seeing.”

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August 2, 2023