Newsom Takes Significant Stab At Reining In Social Media Disinfo, Prompting Ire From Musk

Posted on by Emine Yücel

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed three artificial intelligence bills into law on Tuesday in an attempt to require social media companies to moderate the spread of disinfo and deepfakes — deceptive images, videos or audio clips resembling actual people — during elections. 

The trio, including a first-of-its-kind-law, largely aims to ban, remove or label AI-generated deepfakes and other intentionally misleading content related to elections during specific periods. 

While disinformation has played a growing role in American elections for decades, deepfake technology has in recent years advanced at a ferocious speed. 

Deepfakes Ahead Of 2024 Elections

The 2024 cycle has seen an explosion of faked videos, prompting high-profile controversies. 

In August, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social a deceptive, AI-generated image in which Taylor Swift appeared to endorse his candidacy — a move which backfired when the very popular singer instead endorsed Kamala Harris for president while warning of the dangers of deepfakes and misinformation.

In July, Elon Musk shared a faked Harris campaign video in which a manipulated version of Harris’ voice taking digs at her gender, race, her record as vice president and President Joe Biden. “This is amazing,” the tech CEO wrote with a laughing-crying emoji. 

That episode prompted Newsom to preview the California legislation. “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” he tweeted at the time. “I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Musk took to social media to mock the new California laws over several posts, suggesting they were violations of the First Amendment and would “make parody illegal.” The laws contain exemptions for parody, but one of the three requires parodies to feature a disclaimer in the run-up to an election.

The newly minted California laws come as lawmakers across the country have been contemplating how to regulate AI-generated political content to contain the spread of misinformation and disinformation aimed at confusing voters.

Over the last two years, Capitol Hill has shown sporadic interest in the ramifications of AI, specifically political deepfakes, as well as how to regulate them without undermining freedom of speech rights. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced bills to try and address a complicated set of issues without success. State legislatures have also sought to address the problem: Over the past two years, 18 states have passed some form of laws to limit deepfakes in elections, according to Public Citizen’s tracker.

The California Bills

The California bills are “game changers,” said Oren Etzioni, the founder and CEO of TrueMedia.org — a non-profit dedicated to fighting political deepfakes — and the founding director of the Allen Institute for AI. If successfully enacted, the laws will force social media companies to react by building restrictions into their platforms, he told TPM.

The first bill signed by Newsom, which takes effect immediately and aims to limit the circulation of deepfakes, prohibits people or groups “from knowingly distributing an advertisement or other election material containing deceptive AI-generated or manipulated content” within 120 days of a California election.

The second, set to go into effect in January, requires AI generated audio, video or images in political advertisements to be labeled.

And the third one, also set to go into effect in the new year, requires social media platforms and other websites with more than one million users in California to label or remove AI generated deepfakes within 72 hours following a complaint. The bill also empowers “candidates, elected officials, elections officials, the Attorney General, and a district attorney or city attorney to seek injunctive relief against a large online platform for noncompliance with the act.”

“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation — especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said in a Tuesday statement detailing the three bills.

The laws will almost certainly face extensive challenges in court from social media companies and First Amendment rights groups. The creator of the video Musk tweeted filed a suit in federal court on Wednesday.

Etonzi expressed concern about how California regulators will enforce the bills, and about the provisions of the bills that require social media companies to identify and take action against deepfakes on their own. 

“Self regulation is a little bit like asking the fox to regulate himself outside the hen house,” Etzioni said. “Not likely to be effective, and has actually proven to not be effective by and large.”

But if California prevails, Etzioni said, the state, as home to many leading social media and AI companies, could offer a roadmap for regulators across the country — or at the federal level — who are hoping to successfully curb the use of deepfakes. 

In fact, Newsom signed the bills the same week that a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including California’s U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Adam Schiff (D), introduced a House bill that would federally prohibit political campaigns and other political groups from using AI to create deepfakes to misrepresent their rivals or their views. That bill would also give the Federal Election Commission the power to regulate the use of AI in elections.

Ohio Republican Leaders Gently Beg Trump To Please Not Visit Springfield

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Republican officials in Ohio are politely pleading with the Trump campaign to not visit Springfield after it spent weeks stoking false claims about Haitian immigrants eating residents’ pets, plunging the city into chaos.

Continue reading “Ohio Republican Leaders Gently Beg Trump To Please Not Visit Springfield” →

A Look at the Race 48 Days Out

Posted on by Josh Marshall

We are now 48 days until the 2024 general election. And with the date speeding toward us, I wanted to check in on the state of the race and the latest polls. Kate and I recorded this week’s podcast this morning. And the theme was sort of trying to make sense of just what is happening right now in the aftermath of the build up to the debate and the debate itself. We have another assassination attempt which seems like an oddly secondary story. We have the ongoing grotesquery of Trump’s and Vance’s assault on Springfield, Ohio. The Trump campaign has been rather candid with reporters, telling them that they’re willing to take the hit on now admitting they were lying about the initial Fido and Felix barbecue allegations since it puts immigration at the forefront of the campaign. In other words, it might seem like a bad story for them — they’re revealed as cynical and destructive liars. But it’s a great theme for them. Because if the topic of the day is immigration, they win.

Continue reading “A Look at the Race 48 Days Out” →

Judge Aileen Cannon Failed to Disclose a Right-Wing Junket

Posted on by John Light

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.

Current rates for standard rooms at Sage Lodge can exceed $1,000 per night, depending on the season. With both Montana trips, Cannon’s required seminar disclosures were not posted until NPR reporters asked about the omissions this year as part of a broader national investigation of gaps in judicial disclosures.

Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.”

The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet.

“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Cannon’s husband, Joshua Lorence, a restaurant executive, accompanied her to the 2021 and 2022 colloquiums, which featured noted conservative jurists, lawyers and professors as well as lengthy “afternoon study breaks,” according to records obtained by ProPublica. Cannon emailed university staff to submit airport parking expenses and inquire about rental car reimbursement.

The rule for paid seminars is among the policies set by the Judicial Conference. Federal judges are also required by law to file annual financial disclosures, listing items such as assets, outside income and gifts.

Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)

The court’s administrative office declined to say if she requested a one-time extension to give her until Aug. 13 to file. A spokesperson would not discuss whether she met the deadline or the status of her disclosure, which must be reviewed internally.

Cannon’s performance during almost four years of a lifetime appointment has drawn criticism from lawyers, former federal judges and courtroom observers who told ProPublica that she doesn’t render timely decisions and has made unpredictable rulings in both civil and criminal matters. On July 15, she threw out the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that alleges Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence; Cannon called Smith’s appointment unconstitutional since he was not nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

Smith is appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the court to remand her decision and replace her.

By contrast, Trump, who appointed Cannon in 2020 to the Fort Pierce courthouse, has praised her brilliance, and Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi called her a heroine for throwing out the criminal case against Trump.

For decades, judicial education programs sponsored by George Mason’s Law and Economics Center have drawn in 5,000 state and federal judges and four current Supreme Court justices, according to its website. The school says its programs strive for balance and intellectual rigor. But conference agendas and speaker lists that the university must file with the courts detail lectures and panel discussions built around Federalist Society principles that are associated with conservative legal movements.

Ken Turchi, associate dean for external affairs, said the law school plays no role in judicial disclosures. “Judges’ decisions to submit (or not submit) disclosure forms are theirs alone — it’s a self-reporting process,” he said.

The guest list for the May 2023 Scalia Forum included William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which is now hearing Smith’s appeal. Pryor and dinner speaker Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit judge, did file their required disclosures for the Scalia dinner.

Pryor’s court has overruled Cannon twice in the Trump case. It sided with the government in September 2022 on a motion for a stay and found that it “had established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In December 2022, it ruled that she erred in naming a special master to examine classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. After that decision, Cannon had to dismantle an expensive operation set up by her special master, a senior federal judge in New York.

Gabe Roth, who directs Fix the Court, a nonprofit judicial reform group, said compliance with the privately funded seminar rule has improved in some circuits since his group pressed for compliance with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

“They’re a more effective way for litigants and the public to get a sense of what types of individuals and groups a judge might be hanging out with and learning from,” he said.

Records show that Cannon submitted minor reimbursement requests related to the Scalia Forum trip after she returned, including the 158 miles she drove round trip to the airport. She inquired with George Mason staff about details for an Alaska excursion recommended by a former lawyer in the Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office.

Cannon registered for George Mason’s Hill Country Colloquium at a Texas resort in December 2023 but had to back out for scheduling reasons.

“I hope to join that event, and others, in future years,” she wrote.

If you have information about Judge Aileen M. Cannon, please contact Marilyn W. Thompson at marilyn.thompson@propublica.org.

The More Desperate Trump Gets, The More Toxic His Rhetoric Becomes

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Of Course It Came To This

We’ve moved into the endgame stage of the 2024 campaign, and it’s now obvious that the pivot Donald Trump made when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden was away from the bizarre, new-fangled Biden Crime Family conspiracies to the old tried and true racist and xenophobic attacks that have animated Trump’s national political presence since 2015.

The media coverage of the sustained Trump-Vance attacks on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, has been remarkably clear-headed that the underlying claims around “eating pets” are baseless, fabricated, and continue to be disseminated in full knowledge of their falsity.

What remains a challenge to the media coverage and the national conversation is that Trump’s point isn’t about “eating pets,” or Haitian immigrants, or Springfield. It’s about othering entire segments of the population, largely based on skin color and national origin. It’s about stoking fear in white people about these “others.” And it all reverberates and echoes in the context of othering Harris herself, whose bi-racial identity Trump hasn’t hesitated to highlight in a disparaging way.

Debunking the underlying supposed factual basis for the claims, while important, doesn’t debunk the racism, the xenophobia, or the corrosive effects on American civic life. Those explicit racist messages – not dog whistles, not coded, not euphemized – come through loud and clear to all who are listening, from white nationalists on one extreme to Republican voters to immigrant communities now feeling isolated and under siege.

We’ve seen Trump play this game before with much-easier-to-substantiate claims of undocumented immigrants committing violent crimes, which was a consistent focus of his last two campaigns. The fact that that he picked a more outrageous falsehood to parade around is perhaps a sign of his growing desperation. His lead over Biden slipped away after Harris entered the race, and we should never let it drift too far from our awareness that Trump’s own personal liberty is dependent upon winning this election.

Down The Memory Hole!

CNN: JD Vance got a former professor to delete a blog post Vance wrote in 2012 attacking GOP over anti-immigrant rhetoric

More Incitement

JD Vance’s apparent logic – that the GOP ticket can only be blamed for actual bombs not bomb scares, and that any reporting on bomb threats is a lie and fake news – serves merely as pretext for attacking the messengers:

‘You Can’t Have That Microphone Again’

In an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered this remarkable extended answer on the virulent racist attacks that have become the central theme of the Trump-Vance campaign:

What Laura Loomer Represents To White Nationalists

Laura Loomer’s suddenly higher visibility with Donald Trump just happened to coincide with Trump-Vance unleashing their attacks on Haitian immigrants. It’s not a signal that’s lost on the extreme right:

It’s Not Just Trump-Vance

Your occasional reminder that the entire GOP has made xenophobic attacks on immigrants the centerpiece of the general election campaign, most comprehensively with its fixation on the fake problem of non-citizen voting in federal elections.

As TPM’s Khaya Himmelman reports, in addition to its racist appeal, the non-citizen voting canard also serves the GOP purposes of delegitimizing any election that Democrats wins. And it started months in advance of a single vote being counted.

Important Read

Mother Jones:

Over the last several years, the field [of disinformation research] has undergone a broadscale attack from politicians, right-wing media, and tech industry giants. As a result, research has been curtailed, people have been laid off, and academics working in the space even fear talking to one another, lest it leave them open to charges of “conspiring” by their adversaries.

Election Threat Watch

  • A series of suspicious mailings, some including unknown foreign substances, were sent to election officials in at least 14 states: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Indiana, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut.
  • Russia has retooled its election interference efforts to target the new Harris-Walz ticket, according to a new threat assessment report from Microsoft.
  • Federal judge warns the judiciary that foreign actors could try to interfere in election-related cases.

Trying To Flip The Script

Since Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt against him, Donald Trump has been trying to leverage it into a political cudgel against Democrats, claiming that by calling him a threat to democracy they are inciting violence against him.

CNN queued up clips of Trump using similar (although baseless) language against Democrats:

GOP Still Targeting Childless Americans

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at a Trump town hall event in Michigan yesterday, engaged in another pernicious way of othering Kamala Harris:

The Grifting Never Stops

CNN: “Donald Trump and his children unveiled a new cryptocurrency business Monday in a virtual address from his Mar-a-Lago estate, the latest venture that stands to benefit the former president as he seeks another four years in the Oval Office.”

Senate Republicans Again Block Bill To Protect IVF

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) forced another election-year vote on a bill to protect IVF nationally, and again Senate Republicans blocked it.

Schumer’s maneuvering indirectly set up this bit of nationally televised screw-turning that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) had to endure:

GOP Gov’t Shutdown Watch

I’ve been reluctant to put House Speaker Mike Johnson’s flailing efforts to avoid a government shutdown on your radar, largely because it seems like such an insane self-own by Republicans to force the issue right before the election. Alas, insane self-owns remain a House GOP speciality.

Editor’s Note

Today’s news happens to be a little more video heavy than usual, and that often prompts complaints about Morning Memo’s use of video embeds from X/Twitter. Your concerns are noted and largely shared. It continues to be a challenge to survey the news for you in this fragmented media ecosystem. Between cartoon villain owners turning their platforms into right-wing propaganda machines, dubious privacy practices, paywalls, and other barriers, it’s a jungle out there. There are no easy answers or perfect solutions to navigating this complicated terrain. As the media ecosystem evolves, Morning Memo continues to look for new and innovative ways to bring you the news without making you go “Ick!” about the sources of the news (can’t promise how you’ll react to the news itself though). It’s a imperfect work in progress, but your concerns are heard.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Key Dem Senators Call For Probe Into Allegations That Egypt Funneled $10M To Trump For 2016 Campaign 

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Democratic senators on two relevant committees are calling for their panels to investigate allegations last month in the Washington Post about a now-closed government probe into whether Egypt funneled $10 million to Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign for president. 

Continue reading “Key Dem Senators Call For Probe Into Allegations That Egypt Funneled $10M To Trump For 2016 Campaign “ →

Trump Campaign Would Love A Government Shutdown

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Once it became clear to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) last week that he didn’t have the votes to attach a bill that would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote to a must-pass stopgap spending bill to keep the government open, he said he would spend the weekend having “family conversations” to build a “consensus.”

It’s unclear if Johnson was able to do that. But he did spend some time with Donald Trump this weekend.

Continue reading “Trump Campaign Would Love A Government Shutdown” →

Maybe It Won’t Be That Close?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Stuart Rothenberg is one of those old school election watcher/analyst types, from the pre-poll aggregator, pre-538 era. Rothenberg, Charlie Cook, Larry Sabato etc. His new column out from him in Roll Call caught my eye. The gist is simple enough. While he’s not predicting this outcome, Rothenberg says we shouldn’t be surprised if the 2024 presidential actually turns out not to be that close, despite the fact that a photo finish is the one thing everyone on every side of the race seems to agree on. He points to new high quality polls out of Pennsylvania and Iowa which suggest the race may not be quite as close as we all universally assume. And Rothenberg is not the type you’d generally expect to predict or hint at something like this. As Rothenberg puts it, after detailing this universal consensus: “[I]f you are something of a gambler and everyone you know believes the 2024 presidential contest is and will remain extremely close, you probably should put a few dollars on the possibility that November will produce a clear and convincing win for Harris.”

Continue reading “Maybe It Won’t Be That Close?” →

This Year, Nearly Everyone’s On The Same Page: GOP Gets To Work Early To Delegitimize Election

Posted on by Khaya Himmelman

Ahead of the upcoming election, Donald Trump’s allies are advancing a more organized, more calculated version of their misinformation strategy from 2020. 

Continue reading “This Year, Nearly Everyone’s On The Same Page: GOP Gets To Work Early To Delegitimize Election” →

A Very Important Read

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Over the last ten days, as Donald Trump and JD Vance have rallied and incited hardened pro-Trump extremists to terrorize the community of Springfield, Ohio, most press reports — even ones from normal publications — have listed the Haitian immigrant population as ranging anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 people. The problem is that that number is almost certainly wrong.

Continue reading “A Very Important Read” →