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Few issues unite both sides of the political divide more than anger at U.S. tech companies, whether for censorship of conservative viewpoints or for failing to counter misinformation online. In response to these concerns, legislation introduced in Congress would weaken the U.S. tech industry, ostensibly in the name of breaking up monopolies. Unfortunately, the various bills would hurt the U.S. and strengthen the hand of our greatest geopolitical rival, the Peoples Republic of China.

As of 2018, nine of the top 20 global technology firms by valuation were based in China. President Xi Jinping has stated his intention to spend $1.4 trillion by 2025 to surpass the U.S. in key technology areas, and the Chinese government aggressively subsidizes national champion firms. Beginning with the Made in China 2025 initiative, Beijing has made clear that it wont stop until it dominates technologies such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and more. Last month the National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned that these are technologies where the stakes are potentially greatest for U.S. economic and national security.

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Breaking Up Tech Is a Gift to China - The Wall Street Journal

PHOENIX (AP) Arizonas independent redistricting commission unanimously approved Dec. 22 new boundaries for congressional districts that are likely to shift the states congressional delegation in favor of Republicans.

The new boundaries create four solidly Republican districts, two where Democrats are likely to dominate and three that could be relatively competitive, based on metrics the commission uses to measure competitiveness. Of the potentially competitive districts, one strongly favors Democrats and two lean toward Republicans based on their voting patterns in nine past elections.

Arizonas congressional delegation currently has five Democrats and four Republicans. The likelihood that Democrats will lose ground in Arizona further complicates the partys bleak prospects in next years midterm elections, when control of the U.S. House will be at stake.

This is not the map that I wouldve liked, Democratic Commissioner Shereen Lerner said, saying the two competitive districts couldve been more balanced. But she said the final boundaries had improved from earlier drafts and expressed hope that the picture will improve over the next decade the maps are in effect.

Republican Commissioner Doug York said an earlier draft was better for the GOP, and he credited the commission with approving a map that wasnt favored by either side.

The commission also adopted new boundaries for Arizonas 30 legislative districts in a 3-2 vote after independent Chair Erika Newberg sided with the Republican commissioners. The legislative map includes four competitive districts in the northern and eastern parts of the Phoenix metro area.

Lerner tried in vain to tweak one competitive district in the North Valley to reduce its Republican leaning before the final vote.

On the new congressional map, districts currently represented by Democrats Tom OHalleran and Ann Kirkpatrick the two most competitive in the state under the existing boundaries moved in favor of Republicans. The new boundaries for OHallerans rural district tilt it strongly toward Republicans, casting serious doubt on his prospects for reelection.

Kirkpatrick has already announced plans to retire. The new district boundaries for the region she represents include eastern Tucson, Casa Grande and most of southeastern Arizona.

Much of the area now represented by Republican David Schweikert is likely to become the most competitive district in the state. The new boundaries include Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, parts of North Phoenix, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation.

The regions now represented by Schweikert and Kirkpatrick will be the states two battleground districts. An East Valley District including Tempe, Mesa, Ahwatukee and part of Chandler is considered marginally competitive under the commissions metrics, though voters there have elected Democrats in eight of nine races analyzed by the commission.

The redistricting panel is made up of two Republicans, two Democrats and independent Chair Erika Neuberg, who mainly backed Republican-favored versions of the maps through much of the recent deliberations. Redistricting is required every 10 years under the U.S. Constitution to adjust for population changes around the country.

Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general under Democratic President Barack Obama, said Tuesday night that the maps could draw a lawsuit.

The Chair has a duty to ensure a fair process and not side with Republicans or push a partisan agenda, Holder, who is leading Democratic efforts to influence redistricting around the country, wrote on Twitter. Anything less than maps that are fair will be challenged.

Maps drawn by the Arizona redistricting commissions based on the 2000 and 2010 censuses both were challenged in court.

The voter-created redistricting law, which removed the job from the Legislature and was supposed to limit partisanship, says commissioners should draw districts that are compact and contiguous, comply with the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act and respect communities of interest and city, county or geographic lines or features.

The commission adopted draft maps in late October and then held a monthlong series of meetings across the state before starting its final set of meetings last week.

Republicans generally liked the district maps drawn after the 2000 census, and those done following the 2010 census were regarded as more favorable to Democrats, prompting strong criticism from Republicans.

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Redrawing the lines: Final map of congressional districts approved - Grand Canyon News

Trump at the Turnberry golf course.AP Photo/Scott Heppell

Trump's Scottish golf resorts have claimed millions in pandemic support from the UK government.

Both Trump Turnberry and Trump International Scotland recorded losses in the millions in 2020.

Company accounts signed by Eric Trump cite Brexit as a contributing factor to the resorts' struggles.

Former President Donald Trump's Scottish golf resorts have claimed more than $4 million in UK emergency money as the struggling businesses furloughed hundreds of staff members amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Newly published company accounts for the two international resorts revealed the Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire and Trump International Scotland near Aberdeenshire cut 273 jobs in 2020, while also claiming $3.7 million in furlough support.

Trump relinquished control of both resorts to his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump shortly before he was inaugurated as president in 2017 but kept financial interest in the businesses, both of which are owned by the holding company Golf Recreation Scotland Ltd.

Additional government data reviewed by The Guardian shows both resorts made further financial claims this year as the UK government's emergency job-retention program persisted.

The BBC was the first to report the resorts' additional 2021 claims, which are reportedly worth between $698,000 and $1.7 million, adding to a total between $4.4 million and $5.5 million in furlough support over two years. The new figures have not been included in the Trump companies' most recent accounts, according to The Guardian.

Trump Turnberry recorded a loss of more than $4 million in 2020 while the Aberdeenshire resort reported a loss of $1.7 million. Filings for both resorts cited the government lockdown, which required the businesses to be closed for multiple months in 2020 and into 2021, as reasons for significant staff losses.

But the accounts filed by Golf Recreation Scotland Ltd. and signed by its director, Eric Trump, also cited Brexit as a contributing factor to the resorts' failing finances, according to The Independent.

Story continues

"Brexit has also impacted our business as supply chains have been impacted by availability of drivers and staff, reducing deliveries and availability of certain product lines," the accounts state, according to The Independent.

The documents go on to say increased prices due to freight and import-duty charges after the Brexit vote, as well as a reduced staff availability because of wage inflation, have negatively affected the resorts.

During his presidential campaign and into his presidency, Trump was a vocal supporter of Brexit, which saw a 2016 referendum vote for withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union in 2016. The former president nicknamed himself "Mr. Brexit" in a 2016 tweet and celebrated the Brits, who he said "took back their country" at an appearance in Turnberry in 2016.

The company accounts, filed earlier this month, also suggested that both golf resorts owe additional money to Trump himself in loans from the former president's personal funds and the holding company to Turnberry and Trump International Scotland, totaling more than $158 million, according to The Guardian.

A representative for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, nor did a spokesperson with Trump Turnberry or Trump International Scotland.

Trump opened the Aberdeenshire location in 2012 and bought the Turnberry resort in 2014. The former president is said to be particularly proud of his mother's Scottish heritage.

Last month, a group of human-rights lawyers lost their bid to force the Scottish government to investigate how Trump paid for his two golf courses in the country. The advocacy group Avaaz brought the case after the Scottish government declined to investigate an unexplained-wealth order against Trump.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Donald Trump's struggling Scottish golf courses claimed ...

Donald Trump has claimed 5,000 dead people voted in 2020 in Georgia, a state he lost to Joe Biden on his way to national defeat.

He was off by 4,996.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Monday, state officials have confirmed four cases of dead people voting.

All involved family members submitting votes for the deceased, cases in which the state has the power to levy fines.

In one case detailed by the paper, a widow submitted an absentee ballot for her husband after he died in September, two months before polling day.

An attorney for the 74-year-old woman reportedly told officials her husband was going to vote Republican, and she said, Well, Im going to cancel your ballot because Im voting Democrat. It was kind of a joke between them. She received the absentee ballot and carried out his wishes.

She now realises that was not the thing to do.

Even if Trumps claim about dead voters were true, it would not have saved him from being the first Republican to lose Georgia since 1992. Biden won the state by nearly 12,000 votes. Nor could Georgia alone have overturned Trumps electoral college defeat, by 306-232.

But Trump included his claim in a notorious call in which he pushed the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, to find enough votes to give him victory.

Dead people, Trump said. So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.

He also claimed that a tremendous number of dead people voted in Michigan, adding: I think it was 18,000. Some unbelievably high number, much higher than yours, you were in the 4-5,000 category.

Referring to a claim of upward of 5,000 dead voters he said was presented to Georgia officials, Raffensperger, said: The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So thats wrong.

Trump insisted: In one state, we have a tremendous amount of dead people. So I dont know Im sure we do in Georgia, too. Im sure we do in Georgia, too.

Trumps chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told Raffensperger: You say they were only two dead people who would vote. I can promise you there are more than that.

Raffensperger refused to help Trump, prompting threats to his safety. But the call also placed Trump in legal jeopardy, as a district attorney investigates whether he broke electoral law.

The call was part of scattershot attempts to overturn a defeat Trump insists in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary was the result of electoral fraud.

A few days after the call, on 6 January, Trump told supporters in Washington to fight like hell in his cause. Rioters then attacked the US Capitol, seeking to stop certification of Bidens win, in some cases seeking to capture or kill officials including Trumps vice-president, Mike Pence.

Five people died.

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Trump claims 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia but the real number is four - The Guardian

After Donald Trump was forced from the major social-media platforms for violating their terms of service, the Associated Press reported in March he would soon launch his own site. Jason Miller told Fox News at the time that the former president was poised to "completely redefine the game" with his new tech initiative.

It was against this backdrop that Fox News reported in May that Trump and his team had launched a new "communications platform," powered by a "digital ecosystem." The phrases wildly oversold what was actually a rudimentary blog, utilizing technology that's existed for many years.

A month after its launch, the website was permanently scrapped due to lack of reader interest. The game had not been "completely redefined."

Apparently undeterred, the Republican and his team made a related announcement the week before Halloween, launching the Trump Media & Technology Group, which apparently has multimedia ambitions it says it intends to compete with both Twitter and Netflix and even hired a high-profile CEO: Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he'd resign as a Republican congressman to lead the nascent company.

And while that's certainly of interest, what makes this story amazing is what we're learning about the behind-the-scenes financing of the initiative. The New York Times published this report the week after the company's launch.

[The former president] agreed to merge his social media venture with whats known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The result is that Mr. Trump largely shut out of the mainstream financial industry because of his history of bankruptcies and loan defaults secured nearly $300 million in funding for his new business. To get his deal done, Mr. Trump ventured into an unregulated and sometimes shadowy corner of Wall Street, working with an unlikely cast of characters....

That cast includes a small Chinese investment firm with a curious record. (This may seem a little convoluted at first, but be patient, because this is going somewhere.)

A few years ago, for example, the firm helped create a company called Atlas Technology International, and it claimed in its Securities and Exchange Committee filing to be a company that made cupcakes. Soon after, Atlas filed a new annual report, saying it had made the transition from cupcakes to touch-screen devices, which was a bit odd.

The same folks behind that operation a Chinese firm called Arc Capital said they also ran a smart-phone sales company in south Florida, which did not appear to have ever sold anything to anyone at any time. They also claimed to have a drone software company, which somehow existed without any employees.

The SEC took a closer look and came to the conclusion that these companies were, for all intents and purposes, fake which is a problem, because in the United States, fake companies are not supposed to be publicly traded.

The SEC intervened and took the unusual step of issuing a "stop order," preventing the companies from selling public shares.

And now, as The Washington Post reported, these same guys in Shanghai have partnered with the former American president and the Trump Media & Technology Group.

A Chinese firm helping former president Donald Trump take his new media company public has been the target of investigations by federal securities regulators, who say the firm misrepresented shell companies with no products and few employees as ambitious, growing enterprises, documents and interviews show. Arc Capital, an investment advisory firm based in Shanghai, has repeatedly helped create or finance companies with little or no revenue, no customers and office locations that point to P.O. boxes, according to a Washington Post review of regulatory and court filings.

It's quite a marriage, isn't it? On the one hand, there's Trump, who's been accused of running fraudulent operations such as Trump University and the Trump Foundation, while on the other hand, there's a Chinese firm that's also been accused of launching highly dubious operations.

Keep in mind, the Trump Media & Technology Group, launched to great fanfare in October, does not appear to exist in any meaningful way, at least not yet. It has no products, no customers, and no sources of revenue. A securities lawyer told the Post, in reference to the partnership between the the former president's operation and Arc Capital, Theres a shell company basically merging with another shell company."

Nevertheless, the Republican's friends in Shanghai are raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the public that will ostensibly go towards Trump's media company that, again, still doesn't exist.

All of this has recently drawn the interest of investigators at the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which typically investigates things like insider trading.

So, let's recap. Trump, who spent his White House term boasting about getting tough with China, has partnered with a dubious firm in Shanghai, which doesn't have any offices in the United States, but which is nevertheless financing his first and for now, largely aspirational post-presidency business venture. All of this is now facing federal investigations, in part because of the Chinese firm's history of fake businesses.

I can appreciate why expectations surrounding the former president are low, but this is farcical.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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Why the controversy surrounding Trump's media venture matters - MSNBC