DC Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s appellate court decisions and public comments suggest that he will accelerate the trend toward a political system dominated by wealthy elites — often operating in the shadows, without any form of disclosure. At a March 2016 event at the American Enterprise Institute, Kavanaugh was asked point-blank if he believes that “money spent during campaigns does represent speech, and therefore deserves First Amendment protection.” His answer: “Absolutely.” In 2009, Kavanaugh authored an opinion in a case called EMILY’s List v.

Secret donors financed more than four out of every 10 television ads that outside groups broadcast in 2018 to influence November’s high-stakes congressional elections. Leading the way: organizations affiliated with billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, whose conservative donor network plows hundreds of millions of dollars into politics and policy debates each election cycle.

Russia's information attack against the United States during the 2016 election cycle sought to take advantage of the greater trust that Americans tend to place in local news.The information operatives who worked out of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg not only sought to pose as American social media users or spread false information from purported news sources, according to new details. They also created a number of Twitter accounts that posed as sources for Americans' hometown headlines. 

Researchers will soon have a chance to study every link shared on Facebook, thanks to a new data set released through a research partnership with Social Science One. Announced earlier in 2018, the partnership brings together independent academics with data from Facebook and funding from independent foundations, hoping to provide new insight into the impact of social media on elections.

Democrats and left-leaning public interest groups are turning up the heat on House Republicans on net neutrality, as they seek to rally internet-savvy voters around the issue ahead of the midterm elections. A group of House Democrats is seeking to force a floor vote on a Senate-passed resolution that would undo the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rollback, restoring the Obama-era rules. “There’s tremendous pressure that’s going to be put on Republicans not to sign,” said Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), who leads the House effort.

Mail.Ru Group, a Russian internet company with links to the Kremlin, was among the firms to which Facebook gave an extension which allowed them to collect data on unknowing users of the social network after a policy change supposedly stopped such collection. Facebook said apps developed by Mail.Ru Group were being looked at as part of the company's wider investigation into the misuse of Facebook user data in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Mail.Ru Group developed hundreds of Facebook apps, some of which were test apps that were not made public.

President Donald Trump’s campaign-style rallies have found a receptive audience at Fox News Channel, which unlike the other cable news networks often carries his speeches live and in their entirety. Four times in the past few weeks, Fox has set aside its usual prime-time programming to air the president speaking live to supporters at events in South Carolina, Minnesota, North Dakota and West Virginia. The network also promised live coverage of a Trump rally July 5 in Montana, where Sen Jon Tester (D-MT) faces a tough fight for re-election.

Republican leaders and lawmakers are setting their sights on a new target as they head into a difficult midterm election: an increasingly-powerful tech industry they view as biased against conservatives.