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Today, two conservative social media influencers are now facing felony charges in Minnesota after pulling a stunt at a Minneapolis polling place. Google’s AI search tool is apparently refusing to say outright that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, though it isn’t as cagey if someone outside the US asks who won. Alaska’s Republican-dominated state government is now asking a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump’s Justice Department seeking to invalidate the result of Tuesday’s US Senate race. And a Republican senator who sits on the committee overseeing the FDA was caught buying stock in a drug company just a week before the FDA granted approval for clinical trials.
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Far-Right Influencers Criminally Charged Over Minnesota Election Stunt
Right-wing social media personalities James O’Keefe and Cam Higby have officially been charged with felonies by county prosecutors in Minnesota. They recorded a video of themselves pulling up to Minneapolis polling places during Minnesota’s August primary decked out in what they called “Muslim garb” and claiming to be local voters.
Their goal was to expose supposed weaknesses in a practice known as “vouching,” in which a registered voter can vouch for another would-be voter’s eligibility in the same precinct. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced Wednesday that both O’Keefe and Higby face charges of unlawful voting and identity theft, since they gave election judges the names of real registered voters in those precincts.
It’s incredibly rare for vouching to actually be used. Fewer than 0.6 percent of votes in Minnesota’s 2024 election went through the vouching process, and most of the vouches were from people updating their names or addresses. Anyone vouching has to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury saying they personally know the voter. O’Keefe and Higby never actually signed an affidavits or were given ballots, meaning the built-in safeguard was effective.
According to Moriarty, the pair sometimes used dead voters’ names, while other names they used belonged to living Minnesotan residents who were unaware of the stunt. One of those men actually voted in the primary and was shocked to learn that someone used his name. Election judges noticed O’Keefe and Higby’s odd behavior on their own, so Moriarty’s office could have filed criminal charges even without the two men recording videos of their stunt.
Higby wrote on his X account that the charges amounted to “lawfare” and “FASCISM,” while urging his followers to donate to a crowdfunding campaign for his legal bills. Moriarty also made sure to point out that no one is allowed to conduct an undercover investigation inside of a polling place, and journalists have to identify themselves as such if they show up at one. She also said that individual politics played no role in the decision to file charges.
Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon said any attempt to hoodwink and deceive election workers “will not be tolerated.” On a side note, Donald Trump has claimed that he won Minnesota in all three of his elections but that Democrats were only declared the victor in each contest due to fraud. He actually lost it all three times.
Google’s AI Refuses to Clearly Say That Joe Biden Won the 2020 Election
Some Internet users are noticing a strange problem with Google’s AI Mode search feature. When American users ask it who won the 2020 presidential election, it doesn’t outright say Joe Biden was the victor. Instead, it only refers to Federal Election Commission documents. The same thing happens when users ask whether the 2020 election was stolen.
At the same time, Google’s AI Mode has no trouble clearly saying Donald Trump won the 2016 and 2024 elections. Fast Company reports that one of its U.S.-based employees had to try eight different times to get AI Mode to acknowledge Biden’s win. A Fast Company writer in the United Kingdom got a straight answer right away. However, when they switched on a VPN routed through the U.S., they ran into the same issue.
A spokesperson for Google referred reporters to to a Bluesky post admitting this “isn’t the most helpful response on Search” and promising to fix it. The tool also doesn’t say outright that Barack Obama won the 2012 election, though it does name him as the 2008 winner.
The timing of the non-answer is hard to miss. Trump is still pushing his widely debunked conspiracy theories about supposed election fraud in 2020. His administration is also now offering $1 million for tips leading to voter fraud convictions ahead of the November 3 midterms.
Alaska’s GOP-Run State Government Asks Court to Toss Trump DOJ’s Election Lawsuit
Even Alaska’s Republican-dominated government is now petitioning a federal court to throw out a preemptive lawsuit filed by the Trump Justice Department aimed at stopping the certification of the November 3 election. As Raw America reported last week, the president said he personally directed the department to file it.
The DOJ is arguing that a second candidate, Republican Daniel J. Sullivan, entered the Senate race with the goal of confusing supporters of incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan in order to help Democratic nominee Mary Peltola. But in their Monday motion, attorneys for Alaska said the state elections division has already taken significant steps to help voters tell the two candidates apart — including listing Dan S. Sullivan as the “incumbent” — and that the federal government has no authority to intervene in state elections, especially on behalf of the president’s endorsed candidate.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that disgruntled former staffers for Peltola said they were instructed to find anyone in Alaska named “Dan Sullivan” and see if they could be convinced to run for U.S. Senate. Daniel J. Sullivan, who is an independent from the small fishing community of Petersburg, ended up throwing his hat in the ring. And thanks to Alaska’s primary system in which the top four vote-getters advance to the general election ballot, Daniel J. Sullivan will appear on the ballot on November 3. The Times noted in its report that this practice, known as ballot-stacking, is “common in politics and generally considered legal” and that both parties have done so in past elections, including in Alaska.
Attorney General Todd Blanche insists the DOJ isn’t trying to block certification of the election itself, only to set aside ballots so officials can determine whether voters were actually misled. Peltola’s lawyers said the DOJ’s lawsuit was “wholly baseless.” Advocacy group Common Cause, which is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, has moved to intervene in the case. U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason — a Barack Obama appointee — has fast-tracked the case.
Republican Senator Caught Buying Stock in Pharma Company Days Before FDA Approval
Our final story this evening: Judd Legum of the Popular Info Substack has discovered a remarkably well-timed stock purchase by Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas. On November 8, 2018, while he was still serving in the House of Representatives, Marshall bought 1,250 shares of stock in Ionics Life Sciences — a private Irish medical research company — for $250,000.
Just a week later, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light to Ionics’s subsidiary, Genzada Pharmaceuticals USA, to officially begin clinical trials on an experimental cancer treatment. Marshall didn’t report his purchase until August 2019, which is roughly 240 days late under the STOCK Act. His disclosure also listed the wrong purchase date and wrongly said the company was based in Sterling, Kansas, where Genzada is based, rather than Ireland. By 2020, his stake was worth roughly $500,000.
In 2021, Marshall joined the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which has oversight over the FDA. Legum reports that Marshall has since supported bills and amendments that could benefit small drug companies and emerging cancer treatments that could potentially apply to Genzada. The American Prospect also reported last week on legislation Marshall sponsored that could help a venture capital firm his family has invested in.
Senator Marshall is currently in a neck-and-neck race with Democrat Adam Hamilton, a pastor who is vying to be the first Democratic U.S. senator from Kansas in nearly a century. An October YouGov poll found Marshall with a three-point lead over Marshall.
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