conspiracy theories
Joey Gilbert, a Reno-based attorney, lost the GOP primary for Nevada governor by roughly 26,000 votes in June, a margin of around 11 points. But he wasn’t ready to admit defeat. Empowered by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election, Gilbert refused to concede. He offered a $25,000 reward to anyone who could provide evidence of fraud, lodged a legal challenge and filed for a recount.
...Nye County, a rural enclave in Nevada, has positioned itself as the epicenter of a Donald Trump-fueled conspiracy about the security of electronic vote tabulators. The Nye County Commission voted in March to make the county one of the first to act on the false narratives that machines that count votes are rigged. County Clerk Mark Kampf, who has falsely claimed that Trump won the 2020 election, has said that volunteer voters there will hand count the roughly 30,000 ballots expected in the November election.
...As the global pandemic has reminded us with tragic ferocity in recent years, viruses can, despite our best efforts, be enormously destructive and hard to contain – especially as our world has grown ever-more-crowded and interconnected. And sadly, that goes not just for physical viruses like COVID-19, but viruses of the mind as well. In the era of instant global communication, it’s easier than ever for ideas – even delusional lies and fantasies – to spread like wildfire and do enormous damage before they are exposed and debunked.
...In the afterglow of their dazzling takedown of a so-called infectious disease expert earlier this week regarding the true nature of the so-called “COVID-19 pandemic,” North Carolina Republican legislators are expected to soon announce plans to debunk a variety of other myths propagated by meddlesome left-wing academics masquerading as unbiased researchers.
...A distant cousin of mine recently died of COVID-19. We had long ago lost touch when we both moved from our North Dakota hometown, me to Minnesota by way of stops in Florida and Georgia, and she to Texas, where she worked as a teacher, got married and raised a family for more than 30 years.
...WASHINGTON — The months-long, Republican-led investigation in Arizona into the results of last year’s presidential election has cost millions of dollars and produced no evidence yet of major issues in tallying Maricopa County ballots. Yet supporters of former President Donald Trump are still attempting to follow Arizona’s lead by pushing for so-called audits in several other states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin.
...There have been many contributing factors to the disastrous scope and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States over the past year, but right now, tragically, misinformation and ignorance top the list. As NC Policy Watch investigative journalist Lynn Bonner reported last week, despite the rapid spread of the deadly and highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, millions of North Carolinians are still steering clear of vaccination...
...Experts from four different national nonprofits (the Brennan Center for for Justice, Protect Democracy, Fair Fight Action and States United Action) came together last week at an online panel discussion to examine the latest worrisome trend in undermining democracy: illegitimate election recounts.
...Biden refutes continuing GOP conspiracy claims: "The big lie is just that, a big lie" PHILADELPHIA — Returning to the state that handed him the White House, President Joe Biden made a passionate plea Tuesday for Americans to rise up and protect their voting rights from a series of restrictive measures pushed by Republicans in Washington and in state capitols nationwide.
...Perhaps it’s the pandemic that offers a fitting analogy to the condition of our politics as Americans try to recover from the trauma of Jan. 6 – when we came dangerously close to the onset of an anti-democratic Trump-ocracy. The loss of more than 500,000 of our fellow citizens, their lives snuffed out by COVID-19, has been a cataclysmic shock to the nation, an epic of sorrow and suffering.
...After he leaves office, Trump will likely still have a platform for disinformation
Pro-Trump supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol Wednesday was more evidence of a growing domestic terrorist movement in the country that the next administration needs to address, a Duke University expert on national security and terrorism said.
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