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The reposts and expressions of shock from public figures followed quickly after a user on the social platform X who uses a pseudonym claimed that a government website had revealed “skyrocketing” rates of voters registering without a photo ID in three states this year — two of them crucial to the presidential contest. “Extremely concerning,” X owner Elon Musk replied twice to the post this past week. “Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, asked on Instagram, using the acronym for Social Security number. Trump himself posted to...

NEW YORK (AP) — The second Republican presidential debate will be broadcast Wednesday on Fox Business Network and Univision, but the exclusive online livestream will take place on Rumble, an alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing— and at times promoting — far-right extremism, bigotry, election disinformation and conspiracy theories. By bringing viewers to Rumble to watch the GOP debate, as it did with the first one last month, the Republican National Committee is driving potential voters to a site crawling with content that flouts the rules of more mainstream ones such as Facebook, uh Instagram and YouTube.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s aggressive response to his fourth criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has long used against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists. The early Republican presidential front-runner has used terms such as “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys. He has accused Black prosecutors of being “racist.” He has made unsupported claims about their personal lives. And on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump has deployed terms that rhyme with racial slurs...

Donald Trump has announced a new campaign proposal on United States immigration — barring “communists” and “Marxists” from entering the country. The Republican former president, who is making another bid in 2024, on Saturday said he would use “Section 212 (f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act” to “order my government to deny entry to all communists and all Marxists.” The announcement was reminiscent of Trump’s ban on travelers from several predominantly Muslim countries during his first term… […] He also said there needs to be a “new law” to address communists and Marxists who grew up in America, but...

NEW YORK (AP) — As former President Donald Trump braces for a potential indictment related to hush money payments made on his behalf during his 2016 campaign, Republicans blasting the case as politically motivated are blaming a frequent target: George Soros. The 92-year-old billionaire investor and philanthropist — who has been falsely accused of everything from hiring violent rioters to committing election crimes — doesn’t know and didn’t donate directly to the New York prosecutor steering the probe. But that hasn’t stopped Trump and other high-profile Republicans from accusing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who convened the grand jury investigating...

Results from 6-year-old Anastasia Weaver's autopsy may take weeks. But online anti-vaccine activists needed only hours after her funeral this week to baselessly blame the COVID-19 vaccine. A prolific Twitter account posted Anastasia's name and smiling dance portrait in a tweet with a syringe emoji. A Facebook user messaged her mother, Jessica Day-Weaver, to call her a "murderer" for having her child vaccinated. In reality, the Ohio kindergartner had experienced lifelong health problems since her premature birth, including epilepsy, asthma and frequent hospitalizations with respiratory viruses. "The doctors haven't given us any information other than it was due to all...

Results from 6-year-old Anastasia Weaver’s autopsy may take weeks. But online anti-vaccine activists needed only hours after her funeral this week to baselessly blame the COVID-19 vaccine. A prolific Twitter account posted Anastasia’s name and smiling dance portrait in a tweet with a syringe emoji. A Facebook user messaged her mother, Jessica Day-Weaver, to call her a “murderer” for having her child vaccinated. In reality, the Ohio kindergartner had experienced lifelong health problems since her premature birth, including epilepsy, asthma and frequent hospitalizations with respiratory viruses. “The doctors haven’t given us any information other than it was due to all...

Results from 6-year-old Anastasia Weaver’s autopsy may take weeks. But online anti-vaccine activists needed only hours after her funeral this week to baselessly blame the COVID-19 vaccine. A prolific Twitter account posted Anastasia’s name and smiling dance portrait in a tweet with a syringe emoji. A Facebook user messaged her mother, Jessica Day-Weaver, to call her a “murderer” for having her child vaccinated. In reality, the Ohio kindergartner had experienced lifelong health problems since her premature birth, including epilepsy, asthma and frequent hospitalizations with respiratory viruses. “The doctors haven’t given us any information other than it was due to all...

THE FACTS: A misleading article spreading widely online this week attempts to link recent child and young adult deaths in the U.S. to COVID-19 vaccines.“CDC quietly confirms at least 118k Children & Young Adults have ‘Died Suddenly’ in the USA since the roll-out of the COVID Vaccines,” reads its headline. The article originally appeared in November on The Exposé, a website that has repeatedly spread COVID-19 misinformation. A screenshot of the article’s headline was shared in multiple Facebook and Instagram posts. One Instagram post had more than 15,500 likes as of Thursday. As evidence, the article cites CDC data as...

CLAIM: President Joe Biden signed an executive order in March 2022 that will introduce a cashless society, make paper money worthless, give government new power to inhibit purchases and create a social credit score system like the one in China, which would punish people financially for certain behaviors. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The executive order doesn’t do any of these things. It urged Federal Reserve to explore whether central bank should create its own digital currency and directed Treasury Department and other federal agencies to study the impact of cryptocurrency on financial stability and national security. THE FACTS: In March, Biden...

A film debuting in over 270 theaters across the United States this week uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election nearly 18 months after it ended. Praised by former President Donald Trump as exposing “great election fraud,” the movie, called “2000 Mules,” paints an ominous picture suggesting Democrat-aligned ballot “mules” were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But that’s based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data,...

A film opening in hundreds of theaters across the United States this week uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election nearly 18 months after it ended. Praised by former President Donald Trump as exposing “great election fraud,” the movie, called “2000 Mules,” paints an ominous picture suggesting Democrat-aligned ballot “mules” were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But that’s based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data,...

CLAIM: Members of Congress gave themselves a 21% pay raise in early March. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Social media users are misrepresenting a government spending bill that increased funding for legislative office budgets, not lawmakers’ salaries. Members of Congress use these budgets to hire and pay staff, and to manage other official expenses. Annual salaries for members of the House and Senate will remain the same this year, as they have since 2009.

Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity consulting firm hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to oversee a partisan review of the 2020 election, on Thursday pushed a false narrative that Maricopa County received thousands of mail-in ballots that had no record of being sent out to voters. The firm’s CEO Doug Logan used the baseless claim to urge legislators to subpoena more records and canvass voters at home, grasping for evidence of fraud even as a hand count of a statistical sample of ballots and two post-election audits showed no proof of wrongdoing in Maricopa County’s election. The false claim has reverberated online...

SEATTLE -- Following days of violent confrontations with protesters, police in Seattle have largely withdrawn from a neighborhood that protesters have transformed into a festival-like scene that has President Donald Trump fuming. Trump taunted Gov. Jay Inslee and Mayor Jenny Durkan about the situation on Twitter and said the city had been taken over by “anarchists." “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will,” Trump tweeted. The “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” sprung up after police on Monday removed barricades near the East Precinct and basically abandoned the structure after officers used tear gas, pepper spray and...