Elections and Media

Facebook has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity around divisive social issues ahead of November’s midterm elections. The company detected and removed more than 32 pages and accounts connected to the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into election interference.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is targeting Republican lawmakers and AT&T in a new advertising campaign aimed at highlighting the telecommunication company’s job cuts after receiving a boost from the GOP’s tax law. The CWA has launched radio ads in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas that ties Republican candidates to the job cuts. The group estimates that AT&T has cut 7,000 jobs since the tax bill went into effect in 2018. They accuse the company of using its tax savings to enrich its shareholders and executives rather than investing in workers.

In a recent press briefing, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that the grand jury assembled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller had returned an indictment against 12 officers of Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff (better known as Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, or GRU).

Alex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist who runs the InfoWars website, has been suspended from Facebook for bullying and hate speech. The suspension will last for 30 days, and affects only Jones’s personal account on the social network, not the main InfoWars account. His profile will continue to be published, but he will not be able to post content until the suspension elapses. A Facebook spokesperson said Jones was found to have violated its community standards.

Twitter appears to have adjusted its platform to no longer limit the visibility of some prominent Republicans in its search results, a problem that the company said was a side effect of its attempts to clean up discourse on its platform. Those affected included RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Republican Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, along with Andrew Surabian, Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesman and former Special Assistant to the President. The profiles did populate when entering a full search but not not in the more visible search menu.

Michael Cohen and the publisher of the National Enquirer forged an alliance over the years, looking out for the interests of Donald Trump and each other. Now, federal investigators are examining those ties as part of a wide-ranging probe into Cohen’s personal business dealings and his self-described role as Trump’s fixer. Cohen mediated a dispute between Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who had been a star onTrump’s “Apprentice” reality TV show, and the Enquirer over a story about her brother’s murder.

Facebook officials said the company is using a range of techniques including artificial intelligence to counter Russian operatives or others who use deceptive tactics and false information to manipulate public opinion. The officials told reporters in a telephone briefing they expected to find such efforts on the social network ahead of the US mid-term elections in November, but declined to disclose whether they have already uncovered any such operations.

[Commentary] Mitt Romney wasn’t unfairly maligned in 2012. But he was victim of a toxic media and political culture. American politics has always been brutish. But changes in the media over the last half-century, along with an intense focus on every word candidates say and every mistake they make has resulted in saturation coverage of peccadillos and blunders rather than policies. This may be a good business model for the media, and effective politically, but it has undermined attempts by both parties to overcome polarization and govern.

Voters across four key battleground Congressional districts (CA-25, CO-06, FL-18, NY-19) overwhelmingly support net neutrality and want their member of Congress to force a vote to overturn the FCC and restore net neutrality protections. Support for net neutrality is broad and bipartisan, and moves independents and undecided voters toward a member of Congress willing to take immediate action. Furthermore, a majority of independents and undecideds in the battleground districts tested say net neutrality will be an important factor in determining their vote in the midterm election