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Progressives want Justice Stephen Breyer to step down while Democrats still narrowly control the Senate and before the 2022 midterms, when control of the chamber is at stake. Elizabeth Gillis/NPR hide caption

Progressives want Justice Stephen Breyer to step down while Democrats still narrowly control the Senate and before the 2022 midterms, when control of the chamber is at stake.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has said he will retire on his own terms amid calls from progressives for him to step down from the court so President Biden can name a younger liberal to take his place.

"I'm only going to say that I'm not going to go beyond what I previously said on the subject, and that is that I do not believe I should stay on the Supreme Court, or want to stay on the Supreme Court, until I die," he told NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg in an interview in Boston to promote his book, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics. "And when exactly I should retire, or will retire, has many complex parts to it. I think I'm aware of most of them, and I am, and will consider them."

Breyer's remarks, while not a surprise he hired four clerks in July for the court's next term are likely to anger progressive activists who believe that the 83-year-old justice should make way for a younger nominee who holds his and their values and views. They want him to step down while Democrats still narrowly control the Senate and before the 2022 midterms, when control of the chamber is at stake.

Progressives fear a replay of the situation following the death in September 2020 of 87-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which allowed President Donald Trump to nominate and for the Republican-controlled Senate to quickly confirm Amy Coney Barrett, giving conservatives a 6-3 supermajority on the Supreme Court. Ginsburg didn't step down in 2014 when both the presidency and the Senate were in the hands of Democrats.

But Breyer said being in the court's minority didn't deter him because "about half of our opinions, almost half, are almost always unanimous."

"I see it as trying to decide this case and trying to decide the next case," he said. "And we might be the greatest of friends ... and allies beyond belief on Case 1, and Case 2, we might be on absolute opposite sides."

But an NPR analysis of the court's last term found that the justices swerved to the right, even by the standards of the traditionally conservative Roberts court. While there was unanimity on statutory matters, the justices split along ideological lines in the high-profile politically charged cases such as voting rights.

Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, but a justice can decide to retire at any time. Progressives had hoped to push Breyer in that direction. One group, Demand Justice, even sent a billboard truck driving around the Supreme Court building in April with the message: "Breyer, retire. It's time for a Black woman Supreme Court justice," a reference to the president's vow to nominate a Black woman to the court.

The campaign to push for Breyer's retirement has not gained momentum in the Senate, which votes on judicial nominations. Only a handful of Democrats have suggested they would like to see Breyer, who was nominated to the court in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, retire of his own accord.

The White House has said that Biden's view is that retirement decisions are up to justices themselves.

Link:
Justice Breyer Says He Will Retire When He Thinks The Time Is Right - NPR

Twitter is considering a range of new features designed to provide more protection and control for users, giving you more capacity to manage your in-app interactions and protect your content, in order to avoid being held to account for outdated views that you may have shared.

As reported by Bloomberg, Twitter is considering the new additions to help users feel more open in the app, without fear of judgment and criticism.

Among features being considered, according to Bloombergs report, are:

Which is the real focus of all of these updates Twitter wants to give users more options to feel free and open in how they share and engage on the platform, without fear of being torn down by Twitter mobs or having their old comments come back to haunt them, which may cause people to hold back on posting tweets and engaging in the comments.

Because that can be a problem. As weve seen with various high-profile cases, your past, ill-advised tweets can come back to haunt you, and can be used against you, particularly if you end up taking on a prominent, public-facing role.

Film director James Gunn, for example, lost his job as director of the Guardians of the Galaxy sequels back in 2018 after his old tweeted remarks were re-surfaced, while just recently, newly appointed Jeopardy host Mike Richards was fired after offensive remarks hed made in the past were discovered, make his position untenable.

The short, sharp nature of Twitter, aligned with real-time response, can be perfect for those off-the-cuff, in-the-moment replies and comments, but cases like these highlight the dangers of such, and that could make more people more hesitant to share in the app, which could be limiting further tweet engagement.

Thats why Twitter tried out ephemeral Fleets as a less binding way to share your thoughts in the app, and a timed auto-delete option for your tweets would also align with this.

Along a similar line, Twitter has also added a new Safety Mode option this week, which aims to offer a level of protection from tweet pile-ons and Cancel Culture, which can also cause people to be more hesitant about sharing their thoughts in the app.

Essentially, Twitter wants users to comment and engage as much as possible, and elements like these are an impediment to that, which is why it's now exploring new ways to help users feel more free in what they tweet, while also giving people more ways to avoid the more negative elements, and ending up unwitting targets of abuse and scorn in the app.

Will that work?

Certainly archiving tweets makes sense though there is always the Wayback Machine and other resources that will help online sleuths uncover old comments, if they really want to look.

But it could provide another level of assurance for users, and a better sense of freedom because yes, some of the dumb things we tweeted in years past will be just that; dumb, ill-informed opinions that weve now moved past, as part of our evolution and education, which really should be commended, rather than used as a bat to beat you with.

This is especially true for younger people, whove grown up online, and have gone through their upbringing with social media as an outlet. People are going to have posted stupid things, which, in retrospect, theyll wish that they hadnt.

An auto-archive option would definitely provide benefit in this respect, while more controls over who follows and mentions you, and removing Liked tweets from view, also seem like potentially helpful, beneficial considerations.

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Twitter's Testing a Range of New Control Options, Including Auto-Archiving Old Tweets and Hiding Likes - Social Media Today

A sign of Chinese ride-hailing service Didi is seen on its headquarters in Beijing, China July 5, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/File Photo

BEIJING, Sept 4 (Reuters) - China's ride hailing giant Didi Global Inc (DIDI.N) said on Saturday that media reports that the Beijing city government is coordinating companies to invest in it are not correct.

"Didi is currently actively and fully cooperating with cybersecurity probe, foreign media reports that Beijing city government is coordinating companies to invest in it are incorrect," it said on Weibo.

Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, that China's capital city was considering taking Didi under state control and had proposed that government-run firms invest in it. read more

Under the preliminary proposal, some Beijing-based companies including Shouqi Group, part of the state-owned Beijing Tourism Group, would acquire a stake in Didi, Bloomberg reported.

Beijing-based Didi faces a cybersecurity investigation by Chinese authorities after its New York initial public offering in June. Chinese authorities have stepped up their regulation of technology firms in the past year to improve market competition, data handling and their treatment of employees. read more

Didi is controlled by the management team of co-founder Will Cheng and President Jean Liu. SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T), Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) and Alibaba (9988.HK) are among investors in the company.

Reporting by Yilei Sun and David Stanway; Editing by William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Originally posted here:
Didi denies reports that Beijing city is coordinating companies to invest in it - Reuters

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When earlier this month the Taliban overtook Kabul, gaining control of Afghanistan, accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube began to herald it. Pictures posted by Taliban and pro-Taliban accounts showed signs of safety. There were videos of groups military forces patrolling cities and stopping looting, and messages from its leaders.

In response to the flood of pro-Taliban content, YouTube and Facebook stopped the Taliban from using their platforms (citing US sanctions policies). Cloudflare, an internet service provider, appeared to drop Taliban sites. Twitter said it planned to ban individual pieces of Taliban content that advocated violence, according to Voxs Recode.

Are these bans actually a good idea?

The logic of this crackdown has been basically that the Taliban is badand bad things shouldnt be on social media because they encourage such behavior. It has been pushed for by certain hawkish extremism researchers and some journalists. As one of the proponents of that argument, the Counter Extremism Project, a nonprofit, argued in a statement to reporters, the Taliban represents the worst of the worst in [online] terrorist material.

Giving the Taliban a platform and allowing it to remain online in any capacity poses significant risks to public safety and security, its executive director, David Ibsen, said. But experts are skeptical that this knee-jerk reaction, probably well-intentioned,will actually help.

I question what good banning the Taliban will do for Afghans, Emerson T. Brooking, a fellow at the Atlantic Councils DFR Labs specializing in disinformation and extremism, told me.

When Facebook-owned WhatsApp took down Taliban content last Tuesday, the Financial Times reported there were poor ripple effects. The purge included a complaints helpline that was used by Afghans to report looting.

If the Taliban all of a sudden cant use WhatsApp, youre just isolating Afghans, making it harder for them to communicate in an already panicky situation,Ashley Jackson, a former Red Cross and Oxfam aid worker in Afghanistan and author of a book on the Taliban and its relationship to Afghan civilians, told the Financial Times in reference to WhatsApps decision. Preventing communication between people and the Taliban doesnt help Afghans, it is just grandstanding.

In addition to reducing communication avenues for Afghans, Brooking noted, pushing the Taliban further into digital isolation during a delicate moment in which they seek international legitimacy could let the problem disappear. He argued that allowing them to stay on social media keeps them within the global gaze and therefore subject to the pressure of the worlds judgment. If theyre pushed offline, they might be inclined to do the most repressive things that we fear will happen, Brooking said.

Even trickier is that the Taliban is also the governing body of Afghanistan. It has almost certainly violated social media policies of most platforms and is guilty of obscene atrocities, but so are many nation-states. China runs concentration camps where they brutalize Uyghur Muslims.Saudi Arabia has disappeared countless dissidents and killed thousands of civilians with airstrikes in Yemen. Even the United States military, by its own estimate, killed 700 civilians in 2019 alone. You dont have to paint a false equivalence to see that, evenly applied, whatever metric of brutality and violence that could be used to justify banning the Taliban would force tech platforms to at least consider banning these governments (and several others) if they were sincerely interested in equal application of their rules. (It becomes even thornier when a president, say in the US, is calling for violence.)

The truth is that the big five social media companies are effectively the global FCC right now, Eliza Campbell, director of the Middle East Institutes Cyber Program, told me, referring to the federal agency partly tasked with setting standards of what is permissible for broadcast TV and radio. The companies have all of this power to decide what is and what isnt a government, what is and isnt a legit government, and even who gets to be called a democracy, Campbell said.

This isnt the first timethese kinds of questions have come up. Facebook has amassed so much power that its often forced to make quasi-governmental decisions in its moderation policies. Hezbollah and Hamas in particular have produced challenging questions for the companies.

Brooking noted Hamas specifically as a parallel case to the Taliban: Both have committed atrocities, but both are governing bodies representing people in the countries they operate in. In 2017, Facebook took aggressive action against Hamas that, in Brookings view directly affected the freedom of Palestinian expression.

There is a way of thinking that the problems that happen for social media companies are solvable by social media policies. But the issue of the Taliban is, like many others, beyond the companies. What do you do when the one calling for violence is the government?

Jillian C. York, director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrestles with this in her new book, Silicon Values. Terrorism, she writes, was once viewed as the product of grievances, a tool, and one that could be used both by opposition forces and established regimes. But within a short period, that definition shifted within the US government to one that cast terrorism as purely an activity of sub-state actors. In other words, Max Webers specifically, the state reinforces its monopoly on violence. Somehow, violence carried out by certain governments, no matter how gruesome and unjust, is exempt from being called terrorism or thought of as the same as those from outside groups. The Taliban burst this bubble. They were the non-state actors who now govern the state.

To hide this conundrum, Facebook (and YouTube) have tried to use the law as a justification for kicking the Taliban off their platforms. But even that is shaky: The Taliban is not on the US foreign terrorist designation list. Instead, Facebook and YouTube have tried to say that sanctions law compels them to ban the Taliban. But Twitter isnt instituting a blanket ban. Add in that Facebook has lied before and its a bit hard to believe theyre compelled to do anything.

The companies end up in hot water either way. If the social media platform complies with governments demands, it becomes an extension of state power. If the company doesnt, it is an anti-democratic institution that isnt accountable to anyone. In practice,platformsstraddle the line between these two outcomes.

Facebook behaves as an extension of the US at times and against its interest at other times, depending on where the pressure and money come from, York told me. In this specific case, because of [Office of Foreign Assets Control] regulations, which sanctions the Taliban, its actually much more of a direct extension of [state power]. Essentially, York said, in adhering to US rules, social media companies help extend the reach of the United States far beyond its own borders.

Often, few notice this subtle control of information. The governmentand most people with the power to pressure a social media platformdo not want ISIS posting. Other moments highlight a subtle techno-imperialism, when the geopolitical goals of the US, which can be at odds with the safety of local populations, are carried out through social media platform enforcement. If only non-state actors are banned, and states that carry out gruesome and violent campaigns arent, it lends credence to the idea that state-sponsored violence is somehow more just. The sheer power and size of companies like Facebook and YouTube and even the much smaller Twitter end up creating a situation where there are seemingly no good answers within the status quo.

This was evident already in 2018. At that time, social media companies had received public criticism over letting violent extremists take advantage of their platform. The companies invited reporters like me to their offices to tout their work to address this. As part of an on-background press briefing at a plush DC office, they had been explaining their commitment to keeping violent and dangerous groups off their platform.

As a proxy, I asked an executive of a major technology company if they would have banned the Black Panthers. The Panthers, after all, were a national security threat according to the government. The FBI director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, had said that the Black Panther party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country among domestic black extremist groups. They were occasionally violent. They killed a suspected informant. They got into a provoked shootout with police officers (though this wasnt exceptional at the time). Yes, the Black Panthers provided meals to children and a force of political organizing that worked in the service of pursuing the equality Black Americans were supposed to get from civil rights legislation. But if the US government had said that the Black Panthers were a threat to national security, and social media platforms had existed at the time, wouldnt they be banned under your current policies? I asked.

I watched the gears turn in the executives heads as they tried not to look like they were bullshitting me. They proceeded to dodge the question. They reiterated the policy of banning people advocating violence. They promised to work with governments to determine terror groups that should be banned.

I asked the question again.

An executive continued to dance around it.

Part of the reason the executive didnt elaborate is that they probably couldnt. The rules that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media companies use are often amorphous and contingent. What gets something or a group banned in one instance doesnt get them banned in another. YouTube defended keeping up a video of the journalist James Foley being beheaded by ISIS as newsworthy, until it received substantial pushback and reversed course. The families of Syrian victims of ISIS likely wouldnt have the same ability to mount a campaign in the mainstream media to get social media companies to remove similar types of content.

Each time something bad in the world happens, people quickly turn to these companies to examine if and how these bad things can be excised from platforms. Sometimes it makes sense, but in other moments, whats to be done is less clear. The Talibans takeover of Afghanistan, and subsequent calls for their banning from social media, is probably more the latter than the former.

The right course of action to fix this, Campbell told me, would be to go back in time and bake more social responsibility into companies as they were being built.

Continue reading here:
Does Banning the Taliban From Social Media Actually Help Afghans? Mother Jones - Mother Jones

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One of the loudest voices urging Donald Trumps supporters to push for overturning the presidential election results was Steve Bannon. Were on the point of attack, Bannon, a former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist, pledged on his popular podcast on Jan. 5. All hell will break loose tomorrow. The next morning, as thousands massed on the National Mall for a rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol, Bannon fired up his listeners: Its them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?

When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his War Room podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. This is your call to action, Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.

The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. Its going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we dont have an option, Bannon said on his show in May. Were going to take this back village by village precinct by precinct.

Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.

After Bannons endorsement, the precinct strategy rocketed across far-right media. Viral posts promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.

In Wisconsin, for instance, new GOP recruits are becoming poll workers. County clerks who run elections in the state are required to hire parties nominees. The parties once passed on suggesting names, but now hardline Republican county chairs are moving to use those powers.

Were signing up election inspectors like crazy right now, said Outagamie County party chair Matt Albert, using the states formal term for poll workers. Albert, who held a Stop the Steal rally during Wisconsins November recount, said Bannons podcast had played a role in the burst of enthusiasm.

ProPublica contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannons campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.

Ive never seen anything like this, people are coming out of the woodwork, said J.C. Martin, the GOP chairman in Polk County, Florida, who has added 50 new committee members since January. Martin had wanted congressional Republicans to overturn the election on Jan. 6, and he welcomed this wave of like-minded newcomers. The most recent time we saw this type of thing was the tea party, and this is way beyond it.

Bannon, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.

Tracking a Wave of New GOP Officers

After Steve Bannon called on deplorables to take over the Republican Party from the bottom up, ProPublica interviewed county chairs in competitive states to find out if theyve seen a sudden increase in local-level party officers. Forty-one out of 65 key counties surveyed reported an unusual increase in precinct officers or the local equivalent.

While party officials largely credited Bannons podcast with driving the surge of new precinct officers, its impossible to know the motivations of each new recruit. Precinct officers are not centrally tracked anywhere, and it was not possible to examine all 3,000 counties nationwide. ProPublica focused on politically competitive places that were discussed as targets in far-right media.

The tea party backlash to former President Barack Obamas election foreshadowed Republican gains in the 2010 midterm. Presidential losses often energize party activists, and it would not be the first time that a candidates faction tried to consolidate control over the party apparatus with the aim of winning the next election.

Whats different this time is an uncompromising focus on elections themselves. The new movement is built entirely around Trumps insistence that the electoral system failed in 2020 and that Republicans cant let it happen again. The result is a nationwide groundswell of party activists whose central goal is not merely to win elections but to reshape their machinery.

They feel President Trump was rightfully elected president and it was taken from him, said Michael Barnett, the GOP chairman in Palm Beach County, Florida, who has enthusiastically added 90 executive committee members this year. They feel their involvement in upcoming elections will prevent something like that from happening again.

It has only been a few months too soon to say whether the wave of newcomers will ultimately succeed in reshaping the GOP or how they will affect Republican prospects in upcoming elections. But whats already clear is that these up-and-coming party officers have notched early wins.

In Michigan, one of the main organizers recruiting new precinct officers pushed for the ouster of the state partys executive director, who contradicted Trumps claim that the election was stolen and who later resigned. In Las Vegas, a handful of Proud Boys, part of the extremist group whose members have been charged in attacking the Capitol, supported a bid to topple moderates controlling the county party a dispute thats now in court.

In Phoenix, new precinct officers petitioned to unseat county officials who refused to cooperate with the state Senate Republicans forensic audit of 2020 ballots. Similar audits are now being pursued by new precinct officers in Michigan and the Carolinas. Outside Atlanta, new local party leaders helped elect a state lawmaker who championed Georgias sweeping new voting restrictions.

And precinct organizers are hoping to advance candidates such as Matthew DePerno, a Michigan attorney general hopeful who Republican state senators said in a report had spread misleading and irresponsible misinformation about the election, and Mark Finchem, a member of the Oath Keepers militia who marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and is now running to be Arizonas top elections official. DePerno did not respond to requests for comment, and Finchem asked for questions to be sent by email and then did not respond. Finchem has said he did not enter the Capitol or have anything to do with the violence. He has also said the Oath Keepers are not anti-government.

When Bannon interviewed Finchem on an April podcast, he wrapped up a segment about Arizona Republicans efforts to reexamine the 2020 results by asking Finchem how listeners could help. Finchem answered by promoting the precinct strategy. The only way youre going to see to it this doesnt happen again is if you get involved, Finchem said. Become a precinct committeeman.

Some of the new precinct officers were in the crowd that marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to interviews and social media posts; one Texas precinct chair was arrested for assaulting police in Washington. He pleaded not guilty. Many of the new activists have said publicly that they support QAnon, the online conspiracy theory that believes Trump was working to root out a global child sex trafficking ring. Organizers of the movement have encouraged supporters to bring weapons to demonstrations. In Las Vegas and Savannah, Georgia, newcomers were so disruptive that they shut down leadership elections.

Theyre not going to be welcomed with open arms, Bannon said, addressing the altercations on an April podcast. But hey, was it nasty at Lexington? he said, citing the opening battle of the American Revolution. Was it nasty at Concord? Was it nasty at Bunker Hill?

Bannon plucked the precinct strategy out of obscurity. For more than a decade, a little-known Arizona tea party activist named Daniel J. Schultz has been preaching the plan. Schultz failed to gain traction, despite winning a $5,000 prize from conservative direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie in 2013 and making a 2015 pitch on Bannons far-right website, Breitbart. Schultz did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In December, Schultz appeared on Bannons podcast to argue that Republican-controlled state legislatures should nullify the election results and throw their states Electoral College votes to Trump. If lawmakers failed to do that, Bannon asked, would it be the end of the Republican Party? Not if Trump supporters took over the party by seizing precinct posts, Schultz answered, beginning to explain his plan. Bannon cut him off, offering to return to the idea another time.

That time came in February. Schultz returned to Bannons podcast, immediately preceding Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who spouts baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

We can take over the party if we invade it, Schultz said. I cant guarantee you that well save the republic, but I can guarantee you this: Well lose it if we conservatives dont take over the Republican Party.

Bannon endorsed Schultzs plan, telling all the unwashed masses in the MAGA movement, the deplorables to take up this cause. Bannon said he had more than 400,000 listeners, a count that could not be independently verified.

Bannon brought Schultz back on the show at least eight more times, alongside guests such as embattled Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, a leading defender of people jailed on Capitol riot charges.

The exposure launched Schultz into a full-blown far-right media tour. In February, Schultz spoke on a podcast with Tracy Beanz Diaz, a leading popularizer of QAnon. In an episode titled THIS Is How We Win, Diaz said of Schultz, I was waiting, I was wishing and hoping for the universe to deliver someone like him.

Schultz himself calls QAnon a joke. Nevertheless, he promoted his precinct strategy on at least three more QAnon programs in recent months, according to Media Matters, a Democratic-aligned group tracking right-wing content. I want to see many of you going and doing this, host Zak Paine said on one of the shows in May.

Schultzs strategy also got a boost from another prominent QAnon promoter: former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to impose martial law and rerun the election. On a May online talk show, Flynn told listeners to fill thousands of positions that are vacant at the local level.

Precinct recruitment is now the forefront of our mission for Turning Point Action, according to the right-wing organizations website. The groups parent organization bussed Trump supporters to Washington for Jan. 6, including at least one person who was later charged with assaulting police. He pleaded not guilty. In July, Turning Point brought Trump to speak in Phoenix, where he called the 2020 election the greatest crime in history. Outside, red-capped volunteers signed people up to become precinct chairs.

Organizers from around the country started huddling with Schultz for weekly Zoom meetings. The meetings host, far-right blogger Jim Condit Jr. of Cincinnati, kicked off a July call by describing the precinct strategy as the last alternative to violence. Its the only idea, Condit said, unless you want to pick up guns like the Founding Fathers did in 1776 and start to try to take back our country by the Second Amendment, which none of us want to do.

By the next week, though, Schultz suggested the new precinct officials might not stay peaceful. Schultz belonged to a mailing list for a group of military, law enforcement and intelligence veterans called the 1st Amendment Praetorian that organizes security for Flynn and other pro-Trump figures. Back in the 1990s, Schultz wrote an article defending armed anti-government militias like those involved in that decades deadly clashes with federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas.

Make sure everybodys got a baseball bat, Schultz said on the July strategy conference call, which was posted on YouTube. Im serious about this. Make sure youve got people who are armed.

The sudden demand for low-profile precinct positions baffled some party leaders. In Fort Worth, county chair Rick Barnes said numerous callers asked about becoming a precinct committeeman, quoting the term used on Bannons podcast. That suggested that out-of-state encouragement played a role in prompting the calls, since Texass term for the position is precinct chair. Tarrant County has added 61 precinct chairs this year, about a 24% increase since February. Those podcasts actually paid off, Barnes said.

For weeks, about five people a day called to become precinct chairs in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, southwest of Green Bay. Albert, the county party chair, said he would explain that Wisconsin has no precinct chairs, but newcomers could join the county party and then become poll workers. Were trying to make sure that our voice is now being reinserted into the process, Albert said.

Similarly, the GOP in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, is fielding a surge of volunteers for precinct committee members, but also for election judges or inspectors, which are party-affiliated elected positions in that state. Who knows what happened on Election Day for real, county chair Lou Capozzi said in an interview. The county GOP sent two busloads of people to Washington for Jan. 6 and Capozzi said they stayed peaceful. People want to make sure elections remain honest.

Elsewhere, activists inspired by the precinct strategy have targeted local election boards. In DeKalb County, east of Atlanta, the GOP censured a long-serving Republican board member who rejected claims of widespread fraud in 2020. To replace him, new party chair Marci McCarthy tapped a far-right activist known for false, offensive statements. The party nominees to the election board have to be approved by a judge, and the judge in this case rejected McCarthys pick, citing an extraordinary public outcry. McCarthy defended her choice but ultimately settled for someone less controversial.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, more than 1,000 people attended the county GOP convention in March, up from the typical 300 to 400. The chair they elected, Alan Swain, swiftly formed an election integrity committee thats lobbying lawmakers to restrict voting and audit the 2020 results. Were all about voter and election integrity, Swain said in an interview.

In the rural western part of the state, too, a wave of people who heard Bannons podcast or were furious about perceived election fraud swept into county parties, according to the new district chair, Michele Woodhouse. The districts member of Congress, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, addressed a crowd at one county headquarters on Aug. 29, at an event that included a raffle for a shotgun.

If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, its going to lead to one place, and its bloodshed, Cawthorn said, in remarks livestreamed on Facebook, shortly after holding the prize shotgun, which he autographed. Thats right, the audience cheered. Cawthorn went on, As much as Im willing to defend our liberty at all costs, theres nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American, and the way we can have recourse against that is if we all passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states.

After Cawthorn referred to people arrested on Jan. 6 charges as political hostages, someone asked, When are you going to call us to Washington again? The crowd laughed and clapped as Cawthorn answered, We are actively working on that one.

Schultz has offered his own state of Arizona as a proof of concept for how precinct officers can reshape the party. The result, Schultz has said, is actions like the state Senate Republicans forensic audit of Maricopa Countys 2020 ballots. The audit, conducted by a private firm with no experience in elections and whose CEO has spread conspiracy theories, has included efforts to identify fraudulent ballots from Asia by searching for traces of bamboo. Schultz has urged activists demanding similar audits in other states to start by becoming precinct officers.

The Number of Republican Precinct Committee Members in Maricopa County Surged After Steve Bannons Call to Action

Because weve got the audit, theres very heightened and intense public interest in the last campaign, and of course making sure election laws are tightened, said Sandra Dowling, a district chair in northwest Maricopa and northern Yuma County whose precinct roster grew by 63% in less than six months. Though Dowling says some other district chairs screen their applicants, she doesnt. I dont care, she said.

One chair who does screen applicants is Kathy Petsas, a lifelong Republican whose district spans Phoenix and Paradise Valley. She also saw applications explode earlier this year. Many told her that Schultz had recruited them, and some said they believed in QAnon. Being motivated by conspiracy theories is no way to go through life, and no way for us to build a high-functioning party, Petsas said. That attitude cant prevail.

As waves of new precinct officers flooded into the county party, Petsas was dismayed to see some petitioning to recall their own Republican county supervisors for refusing to cooperate with the Senate GOPs audit.

It is not helpful to our democracy when you have people who stand up and do the right thing and are honest communicators about whats going on, and they get lambasted by our own party, Petsas said. Thats a problem.

This spring, a team of disaffected Republican operatives put Schultzs precinct strategy into action in South Carolina, a state that plays an outsize role in choosing presidents because of its early primaries. The operatives goal was to secure enough delegates to the partys state convention to elect a new chair: far-right celebrity lawyer Lin Wood.

Wood was involved with some of the lawsuits to overturn the presidential election that courts repeatedly ruled meritless, or even sanctionable. After the election, Wood said on Bannons podcast, I think the audience has to do what the people that were our Founding Fathers did in 1776. On Twitter, Wood called for executing Vice President Mike Pence by firing squad. Wood later said it was rhetorical hyperbole, but that and other incendiary language got him banned from mainstream social media. He switched to Telegram, an encrypted messaging app favored by deplatformed right-wing influencers, amassing roughly 830,000 followers while repeatedly promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Asked for comment about his political efforts, Wood responded, Most of your facts are either false or misrepresent the truth. He declined to cite specifics.

Typically, precinct meetings were a yawner, according to Mike Connett, a longtime party member in Horry County, best known for its popular beach towns. But in April, Connett and other establishment Republicans were caught off guard when 369 people, many of them newcomers, showed up for the county convention in North Myrtle Beach. Connett lost a race for a leadership role to Diaz, the prominent QAnon supporter, and Woods faction captured the countys other executive positions plus 35 of 48 delegate slots, enabling them to cast most of the countys votes for Wood at the state convention. It seemed like a pretty clean takeover, Connett told ProPublica.

In Greenville, the states most populous county, Wood campaign organizers Jeff Davis and Pressley Stutts mobilized a surge of supporters at the county convention about 1,400 delegates, up from roughly 550 in 2019 and swept almost all of the 79 delegate positions. That gave Woods faction the vast majority of the votes in two of South Carolinas biggest delegations.

Across the state, the precinct strategy was contributing to an unprecedented surge in local party participation, according to data provided by a state GOP spokeswoman. In 2019, 4,296 people participated. This year, 8,524 did.

Its a prairie fire down there in Greenville, South Carolina, brought on by the MAGA posse, Bannon said on his podcast.

Establishment party leaders realized they had to take Woods challenge seriously. The incumbent chair, Drew McKissick, had Trumps endorsement three times over including twice after Wood entered the race. But Wood fought back by repeatedly implying that McKissick and other prominent state Republicans were corrupt and involved in various conspiracies that seemed related to QAnon. The race became heated enough that after one event, Wood and McKissick exchanged angry words face-to-face.

Woods rallies were raucous affairs packed with hundreds of people, energized by right-wing celebrities like Flynn and Lindell. In interviews, many attendees described the events as their first foray into politics, sometimes referencing Schultz and always citing Trumps stolen election myth. Some said theyd resort to violence if they felt an election was stolen again.

Woods campaign wobbled in counties that the precinct strategy had not yet reached. At the state convention in May, Wood won about 30% of the delegates, commanding Horry, Greenville and some surrounding counties, but faltering elsewhere. A triumphant McKissick called Woods supporters a fringe, rogue group and vowed to turn them into a leper colony by building parallel Republican organizations in their territory.

But Wood and his partisans did not act defeated. The chairmanship election, they argued, was as rigged as the 2020 presidential race. Wood threw a lavish party at his roughly 2,000-acre low-country estate, secured by armed guards and surveillance cameras. From a stage fit for a rock concert on the lawn of one of his three mansions, Wood promised the fight would continue.

Diaz and her allies in Horry County voted to censure McKissick. The countys longtime Republicans tried, but failed, to oust Diaz and her cohort after one of the people involved in drafting Wood tackled a protester at a Flynn speech in Greenville. (This incident, the details of which are disputed, prompted Schultz to encourage precinct strategy activists to arm themselves.) Wood continued promoting the precinct strategy to his Telegram followers, and scores replied that they were signing up.

In late July, Stutts and Davis forced out Greenville County GOPs few remaining establishment leaders, claiming that they had cheated in the first election. Then Stutts, Davis and an ally won a new election to fill those vacant seats. They sound like Democrats, right? Bannon asked Stutts in a podcast interview. Stutts replied, They taught the Democrats how to cheat, Steve.

Stutts group quickly pushed for an investigation of the 2020 presidential election, planning a rally featuring Davis and Wood at the end of August, and began campaigning against vaccine and school mask mandates. I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery, Stutts had previously posted on Facebook, quoting Thomas Jefferson. Stutts continued posting messages skeptical of vaccine and mask mandates even after he entered the hospital with a severe case of COVID-19. He died on Aug. 19.

The hubbub got so loud inside the Cobb County, Georgia, Republican headquarters that it took several shouts and whistles to get everyones attention. It was a full house for Salleigh Grubbs first meeting as the countys party chair. Grubbs ran on a vow to clean house in the election system, highlighting her December testimony to state lawmakers in which she raised unsubstantiated fraud allegations. Supporters praised Grubbs courage for following a truck she suspected of being used in a plot to shred evidence. She attended Trumps Jan. 6 rally as a VIP. She won the chairmanship decisively at an April county convention packed with an estimated 50% first-time participants.

In May, Grubbs opened her first meeting by asking everyone munching on bacon and eggs to listen to her recite the Gettysburg Address. Think of the battle for freedom that Americans have before them today, Grubbs said. Those people fought and died so that you could be the precinct chair. After the reading, first-time precinct officers stood for applause and cheers.

Their work would start right away: putting up signs, making calls and knocking on doors for a special election for the state House. The district had long leaned Republican, but after the GOPs devastating losses up and down the ballot in 2020, they didnt know what to expect.

Theres so many people out there that are scared, they feel like their vote doesnt count, Cooper Guyon, a 17-year-old right-wing podcaster from the Atlanta area who speaks to county parties around the state, told the Cobb Republicans in July. The activists, he said, need to get out in these communities and tell them that we are fighting to make your vote count by passing the Senate bill, the election-reform bills that are saving our elections in Georgia.

Of the fields two Republicans, Devan Seabaugh took the strongest stance in favor of Georgias new law restricting ways to vote and giving the Republican-controlled Legislature more power over running elections. The only people who may be inconvenienced by Senate Bill 202 are those intent on committing fraud, he wrote in response to a local newspapers candidate questionnaire.

Seabaugh led the June special election and won a July runoff. Grubbs cheered the win as a turning point. We are awake. We are preparing, she wrote on Facebook. The conservative citizens of Cobb County are ready to defend our ballots and our county.

Newcomers did not meet such quick success everywhere. In Savannah, a faction crashed the Chatham County convention with their own microphone, inspired by Bannons podcast to try to depose the incumbent party leaders who they accused of betraying Trump. Party officers blocked the newcomers candidacies, saying they werent officially nominated. Shouting erupted, and the meeting adjourned without a vote. Then the party canceled its districtwide convention.

The state party ultimately sided with the incumbent leaders. District chair Carl Smith said the uprising is bound to fail because the insurgents are mistaken in believing that he and other local leaders didnt fight hard enough for Trump.

You cant build a movement on a lie, Smith said.

In Michigan, activists who identify with a larger movement working against Republicans willing to accept Trumps loss have captured the party leadership in about a dozen counties. Theyre directly challenging state party leaders, who are trying to harness the grassroots energy without indulging demands to keep fighting over the last election.

Some of the takeovers happened before the rise of the precinct strategy. But the activists are now organizing under the banner Precinct First and holding regular events, complete with notaries, to sign people up to run for precinct delegate positions.

We are reclaiming our party, Debra Ell, one of the organizers, told ProPublica. Were building an America First army.

Under normal rules, the wave of new precinct delegates could force the party to nominate far-right candidates for key state offices. Thats because in Michigan, party nominees for attorney general, secretary of state and lieutenant governor are chosen directly by party delegates rather than in public primaries. But the state party recently voted to hold a special convention earlier next year, which should effectively lock in candidates before the new, more radical delegates are seated.

Activist-led county parties including rural Hillsdale and Detroit-area Macomb are also censuring Republican state legislators for issuing a June report on the 2020 election that found no evidence of systemic fraud and no need for a reexamination of the results like the one in Arizona. (The censures have no enforceable impact beyond being a public rebuke of the politicians.) At the same time, county party leaders in Hillsdale and elsewhere are working on a ballot initiative to force an Arizona-style election review.

Establishment Republicans have their own idea for a ballot initiative one that could tighten rules for voter ID and provisional ballots while sidestepping the Democratic governors veto. If the initiative collects hundreds of thousands of valid signatures, it would be put to a vote by the Republican-controlled state Legislature. Under a provision of the state constitution, the state Legislature can adopt the measure and it cant be vetoed.

State party leaders recently reached out to the activists rallying around the rejection of the presidential election results, including Hillsdale Republican Party Secretary Jon Smith, for help. Smith, Ell and others agreed to join the effort, the two activists said.

This empowers them, Jason Roe, the state party executive director whose ouster the activists demanded because he said Trump was responsible for his own loss, told ProPublica. Roe resigned in July, citing unrelated reasons. Its important to get them focused on change that can actually impact future elections, he said, instead of keeping their feet mired in the conspiracy theories of 2020.

Jesse Law, who ran the Trump campaigns Election Day operations in Nevada, sued the Democratic electors, seeking to declare Trump the winner or annul the results. The judge threw out the case, saying Laws evidence did not meet any standard of proof, and the Nevada Supreme Court agreed. When the Electoral College met in December, Law stood outside the state capitol to publicly cast mock votes for Trump.

This year, Law set his sights on taking over the Republican Party in the states largest county, Clark, which encompasses Las Vegas. He campaigned on the precinct strategy, promising 1,000 new recruits. His path to winning the county chairmanship just like Stutts team in South Carolina, and Grubbs in Cobb County, Georgia relied on turning out droves of newcomers to flood the county party and vote for him.

In Laws case, many of those newcomers came through the Proud Boys, the all-male gang affiliated with more than two dozen people charged in the Capitol riot. The Las Vegas chapter boasted about signing up 500 new party members (not all of them belonging to the Proud Boys) to ensure their takeover of the county party. After briefly advancing their own slate of candidates to lead the Clark GOP, the Proud Boys threw their support to Law. They also helped lead a state party censure of Nevadas Republican secretary of state, who rejected the Trump campaigns baseless claims of fraudulent ballots.

Law, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, has declined to distance himself from the Las Vegas Proud Boys, citing Trumps stand back and stand by remark at the September 2020 presidential debate. When the president was asked if he would disavow, he said no, Law told an independent Nevada journalist in July. If the president is OK with that, Im going to take the presidential stance.

The outgoing county chair, David Sajdak, canceled the first planned vote for his successor. He said he was worried the Proud Boys would resort to violence if their newly recruited members, who Sajdak considered illegitimate, werent allowed to vote.

Sajdak tried again to hold a leadership vote in July, with a meeting in a Las Vegas high school theater, secured by police. But the crowd inside descended into shouting, while more people tried to storm past the cops guarding the back entrance, leading to scuffles. Let us in! Let us in! some chanted. Riling them up was at least one Proud Boy, according to multiple videos of the meeting.

At the microphone, Sajdak was running out of patience. Im done covering for you awful people, he bellowed. Unable to restore order, Sajdak ended the meeting without a vote and resigned a few hours later. Hed had enough.

They want to create mayhem, Sajdak said.

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Soon after, Laws faction held their own meeting at a hotel-casino and overwhelmingly voted for Law as county chairman. Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, a longtime ally of Law who helped lead Trumps futile effort to overturn the Nevada results, recognized Law as the new county chair and promoted a fundraiser to celebrate. The existing county leaders sued, seeking a court order to block Laws fraudulent, rogue election. The judge preliminarily sided with the moderates, but told them to hold off on their own election until a court hearing in September.

To Sajdak, agonizing over 2020 is pointless because theres no mechanism for overturning an election. Asked if Laws allies are determined to create one, Sajdak said: Its a scary thought, isnt it.

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Heeding Steve Bannons Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP and Reshape Americas Elections - ProPublica