# Powerful earthquakes leave at least 55 dead, destroy buildings along Japan's western coast
By **HIRO KOMAE** and **YURI KAGEYAMA**
January 2, 2024. 10:41 AM EST

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**WAJIMA, Japan (AP)** - A series of powerful earthquakes that hit western Japan have left at least 55 people dead and damaged thousands of buildings, vehicles and boats. Officials warned Tuesday that more quakes could lie ahead.

Aftershocks continued to shake Ishikawa prefecture and nearby areas a day after a magnitude 7.6 temblor slammed the area.

Damage was so great that it could not immediately be assessed. Japanese media reports said tens of thousands of homes were destroyed.

Government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi said 17 people were seriously injured and gave a slightly lower death toll, saying he was aware of the prefecture's tally.

Water, power and cell phone service were still down in some areas. Residents expressed sorrow about their uncertain futures.

"It's not just that it's a mess. The wall has collapsed, and you can see through to the next room. I don't think we can live here anymore," Miki Kobayashi, an Ishikawa resident, said as she swept around her house.

The house was also damaged in a 2007 quake, she said.

Although casualty numbers continued to climb gradually, the prompt public warnings, relayed on broadcasts and phones, and the quick response from the general public and officials appeared to have limited some of the damage.

Toshitaka Katada, a University of Tokyo professor specializing in disasters, said people were prepared because the area had been hit by quakes in recent years. They had evacuation plans and emergency supplies in stock.

"There are probably no people on Earth who are as disaster-ready as the Japanese," he told The Associated Press.

Japan is frequently hit by earthquakes because of its location along the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.

Katada warned the situation remains precarious and unpredictable. The March 2011 quake and tsunami in northeastern Japan had been preceded by other quakes.

"This is far from over," Katada said.

Predictions by scientists have repeatedly been proven wrong, such as with the 2016 quake in southwestern Kumamoto, an area previously seen as relatively quake-free.

"Having too much confidence in the power of science is very dangerous. We are dealing with nature," Katada said.

Japanese media's aerial footage showed widespread damage in the hardest-hit spots, with landslides burying roads, boats tossed in the waters and a fire that had turned an entire section of Wajima city to ashes.

Japan's military dispatched 1,000 soldiers to the disaster zones to join rescue efforts, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.

"Saving lives is our priority and we are fighting a battle against time," he said. "It is critical that people trapped in homes get rescued immediately."

A quake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 shook the Ishikawa area as he was speaking. Quakes continued to rock the area, reaching more than 100 aftershocks over the past day.

Nuclear regulators said several nuclear plants in the region were operating normally. A major quake and tsunami in 2011 caused three reactors to melt and release large amounts of radiation at a nuclear plant in northeastern Japan.

On Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for Ishikawa and lower-level tsunami warnings or advisories for the rest of the western coast of Japan's main island of Honshu, as well as for the northern island of Hokkaido.

The warning was downgraded several hours later, and all tsunami warnings were lifted as of early Tuesday. Waves measuring more than one meter (3 feet) hit some places.

Still, half-sunken ships floated in bays where tsunami waves had rolled in, leaving a muddied coastline.

People who were evacuated from their houses huddled in auditoriums, schools and community centers. Bullet trains in the region were halted, but service was mostly restored by Tuesday afternoon. Sections of highways were closed.

Weather forecasters predicted rain, setting off worries about crumbling buildings and infrastructure.

The region includes tourist spots famous for lacquerware and other traditional crafts, along with designated cultural heritage sites.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement that his administration was "ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Japanese people."


# Russian missiles hit Ukrainian cities, killing 5 and injuring more than 100, Kyiv officials say
By **ILLIA NOVIKOV** and **HANNA ARHIROVA**
January 2, 2024. 10:55 AM EST

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**KYIV, Ukraine (AP)** - Ukraine's two largest cities came under attack Tuesday from Russian missiles that killed five people and injured more than 100, officials said, as the war approached its two-year mark and the Kremlin stepped up its winter bombardment of urban areas.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry said Tuesday evening that the attack killed five civilians and injured 127 as air defenses downed Russian Kinzhal missiles that can fly at 10 times the speed of sound. The Kremlin's forces targeted Kyiv, the capital, and the northeastern Kharkiv region whose provincial capital is also called Kharkiv, authorities said.

There was some confusion over the death toll as Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov initially reported one death there but later said the injured woman thought to have been killed was in a coma. He said 52 people were wounded in Kharkhiv.

Air defenses shot down all 10 of the hypersonic missiles, out of about 100 of various types that were launched, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi claimed. It was the most Kinzhals used by Russia in one attack since the start of the war, air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said.

The barrage extended Russian attacks that began Friday with its largest single assault on Ukraine since the war started, as fighting along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line has subsided into grinding attrition amid winter. At least 41 civilians were killed since the weekend.

At a nine-story Kyiv apartment building where two people were killed, 48-year-old Inna Luhina was getting ready for work when a blast shattered her windows and she and other family members, including her 80-year-old mother, were struck by flying glass.

More than 100 survivors gathered at a school set up as a temporary shelter.

Iryna Dzyhil, a 55-year-old resident of the same building, said the explosion threw her and her husband from their chairs, and a subsequent fire trapped them on the top floor until emergency crews rescued them via the roof.

"They say they're hitting military targets, but they're hitting people, killing our children and our loved ones," Dzyhil said of the Russians.

Russia fired almost 100 missiles of various types in the attacks, Zelenskyy said on X, formerly Twitter. He claimed at least 70 were shot down, almost all of them in the Kyiv area, noting that Western-supplied air defense systems such as Patriots and NASAMS had saved hundreds of lives.

Russia's Defense Ministry said it had launched missile and drone strikes on military industrial facilities in and around Kyiv. Depots storing missiles and munitions supplied by the West also were targeted, it said.

"The goal of the strike has been achieved, all the targets have been hit," it said without elaborating.

It was not possible to independently verify either side's claims.

Zelenskyy said that since Sunday, Russian forces have launched about 170 Shahed drones and dozens of missiles, with most aimed at civilian areas.

The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal is an air-launched hypersonic ballistic missile. Russian forces rarely use such expensive missiles against Ukraine, due to their limited stocks.

The attacks created a desolate morning scene in Kyiv, with most cafes and restaurants remaining closed. Many people opted to stay indoors or seek refuge in shelters as powerful blasts shook the city from early morning. Air raid sirens blared for nearly four hours, and the city's subway stations - which function as shelters - were crowded.

After the air force issued warnings about incoming missiles, people wearing pajamas underneath their coats took sleeping bags, mats and their pets to subway stations while loud explosions echoed above. At one of the central stations, called Golden Gates, hundreds of people filled the spacious underground areas while trains continued to run.

"Perhaps today was the most frightening because there were so many explosions," said resident Myroslava Shcherba.

On Saturday, shelling of the Russian border city of Belgorod killed more than two dozen people. Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack and has struck back repeatedly since then.

The Belgorod attack was one of the deadliest on Russian soil since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine started more than 22 months ago. Russian officials said the death toll reached 26, including five children, after a new salvo of rockets Tuesday.

Air defense systems near Belgorod shot down four missiles fired Tuesday by a Ukrainian Vilkha multiple rocket launcher, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Over the previous 24 hours, Ukraine has carried out at least 50 attacks, including shelling and explosives from drones, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Cities in western Russia have regularly come under drone attacks since May, although Ukrainian officials never acknowledge responsibility for strikes on Russian territory or the annexed Crimean Peninsula.

"They want to intimidate us and create uncertainty within our country. We will intensify strikes. Not a single crime against our civilian population will go unpunished," Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday, describing the barrage of Belgorod as a "terrorist act."

He accused Western nations of using Ukraine to try to "put Russia in its place." While vowing retribution, he insisted Moscow would only target military infrastructure in Ukraine, but officials in Kyiv report civilian casualties from daily attacks on apartment buildings, shopping centers and residential areas.

In other developments, Russia's Defense Ministry said one of its warplanes accidentally released munitions over the southwestern Russian village of Petropavlovka in the Voronezh region Tuesday, damaging six houses but causing no injuries. It said an investigation will determine the cause of the accident but didn't say what type of weapon the warplane dropped.

In April, munitions accidentally released by a Russian warplane caused a powerful blast in Belgorod, damaging several cars and slightly injuring two people.


# How Dominican women fight child marriage and teen pregnancy while facing total abortion bans
By **MARÍA TERESA HERNÁNDEZ**
January 2, 2024. 8:00 AM EST

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**AZUA, Dominican Republic (AP)** - It was a busy Saturday morning at Marcia González's church. A bishop was visiting, and normally she would have been there helping with logistics, but on this day she was teaching sex education at a local school.

"I coordinate activities at the church and my husband is a deacon," González said. "The bishop comes once a year and children are being confirmed, but I am here because this is important for my community."

For 40 years, González and her husband have pushed for broader sex education in the Dominican Republican, one of four Latin American nations that criminalizes abortion without exceptions. Women face up to 2 years in prison for having an abortion; penalties for doctors or midwives range from 5 to 20 years.

With a Bible on its flag, the Caribbean country has a powerful lobby of Catholics and evangelicals who are united against decriminalizing abortion.

President Luis Abinader committed to the decriminalization of abortion as a candidate in 2020, but his government hasn't acted on that pledge. For now, it depends on whether he is re-elected in May.

To help girls prevent unplanned pregnancies in this context, González and other activists have developed "teenage clubs," where adolescents learn about sexual and reproductive rights, self-esteem, gender violence, finances and other topics. The goal is to empower future generations of Dominican women.

Outside the clubs, sex education is often insufficient, according to activists. Close to 30% of adolescents don't have access to contraception. High poverty levels increase the risks of facing an unwanted pregnancy.

For the teenagers she mentors, González's concerns also go beyond the impossibility of terminating a pregnancy.

According to activists, poverty forces some Dominican mothers to marry their 14 or 15-year-old daughters to men up to 50 years older. Nearly 7 out of 10 women suffer from gender violence such as incest, and families often remain silent regarding sexual abuse.

For every 1,000 adolescents between 15 and 19, 42 became mothers in 2023, according to the United Nations Population Fund. And until 2019, when UNICEF published its latest report on child marriage, more than a third of Dominican women married or entered a free union before turning 18.

Dominican laws have prohibited child marriage since 2021, but community leaders say that such unions are still common because the practice has been normalized and few people are aware of the statute.

"In my 14-year-old granddaughter's class, two of her younger friends are already married," González said. "Many mothers give the responsibility of their younger children to their older daughters so, instead of taking care of little boys, they run away with a husband."

Activists hope education can help prevent girls from facing this situation.

"There are myths that people tell you when you have your period," said Gabriela Díaz, 16, during a recent encounter organized by the Women's Equality Center. "They say that we are dirty or we have dirty blood, but that is false. We are helping our body to clean itself and improve its functions."

Díaz calls González "godmother," a term applied by Plan International to community leaders who implement the programs of this UK-based organization, which promotes children's rights.

According to its own data, San Cristóbal and Azua, where González lives, are the Dominican cities with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and child marriage.

To address this, its clubs accept girls between 13 and 17. Each group meets 2 hours per week, welcomes up to 25 participants and is led by volunteers like González.

In San Cristobal, also in southern Dominican Republic, the National Confederation of Rural Women (CONAMUCA) sponsors teenage clubs of its own.

"CONAMUCA was born to fight for land ownership, but the landscape has changed, and we have integrated new issues, such as food sovereignty, agrarian reform, and sexual and reproductive rights," said Lidia Ferrer, one of its leaders.

Its clubs gather 1,600 girls in 60 communities, Ferrer said. The topics they study vary from region to region, but among the recurring ones are adolescent pregnancy, early unions and feminicide.

"The starting point is our own reality," said Kathy Cabrera, who joined CONAMUCA clubs at age 9 and two decades later takes new generations under her wing. "It's how we live and suffer."

Migration is increasingly noticeable in rural areas, Cabrera said. Women are forced to walk for miles to attend school or find water, and health services fail in guaranteeing their sexual and reproductive rights.

"We have a government that tells you 'Don't have an abortion' but does not provide the necessary contraception to avoid it."

She has witnessed how 13-year-old girls bear the children of 65-year-old men while neither families nor authorities seem to be concerned. On other occasions, she said, parents "give away" their daughters because they cannot support them or because they discover that they are no longer virgins.

"It's not regarded as sexual abuse because, if my grandmother got pregnant and married at an early age, and my great-grandmother too and my mother too, then it means I should too," Cabrera said.

In southern Dominican communities, most girls can relate to this, or know someone who does.

"My sister got pregnant at 16 and that was very disturbing," said 14-year-old Laura Pérez. "She got together with a person much older than her, and they have a baby. I don't think that was right."

The clubs' dynamics change as needed to create safe and loving environments for girls to share what they feel. Some sessions kick off with relaxation exercises and others with games.

Some girls speak proudly of what they have learned. One of them mentioned she confronted her father when he said she shouldn't cut any lemons from a tree while menstruating. Another said that her friends always go to the bathroom in groups, to avoid safety risks. They all regard their godmothers as mentors who have their backs.

"They call me to confide everything," González said. "I am happy because, in my group, no girl has become pregnant."

Many girls from teenage clubs have dreams they want to follow. Francesca Montero, 16, would like to become a pediatrician. Perla Infante, 15, a psychologist. Lomelí Arias, 18, a nurse.

"I want to be a soldier!" shouted Laura Pérez, the 14-year-old who wants to be careful not to following her sister's footsteps.

"I was undecided, but when I entered CONAMUCA I knew I wanted to become a soldier. In here we see all these women who give you strength, who are like you, but as a guide," Pérez said. "It's like a child seeing an older person and thinking: 'When I grow up, I want to be like that.'"


# Abortion debate creates 'new era' for state supreme court races in 2024, with big spending expected
By **CHRISTINE FERNANDO** and **ANDREW DeMILLO**
December 29, 2023. 1:12 PM EST

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**CHICAGO (AP)** - The 2024 elections will be dominated by the presidential contest and the battle for control of Congress, but another series of races is shaping up to be just as consequential.

Crucial battles over abortion, gerrymandering, voting rights and other issues will take center stage in next year's elections for state supreme court seats - 80 of them in 33 states.

The races have emerged as some of the most hotly contested and costliest contests on the ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the consitutional right to an abortion. The decision shifted the abortion debate to states, creating a "new era" in state supreme court elections, said Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks spending in judicial races.

"We have seen attention on state supreme court elections like never before and money in these races like never before," Keith said.

Heated court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2023 handed victories to Democrats and saw tens of millions of dollars in TV ads, offering a preview of 2024. They're also prompting groups to consider investing in states they would not previously have considered.

## ABORTION AND GERRYMANDERING TOP ISSUES
At least 38 lawsuits have been filed challenging abortion bans in 23 states, according to the Brennan Center. Many of those are expected to end up before state supreme courts.

The ACLU is watching cases challenging abortion restrictions in Wyoming, Kentucky, Ohio, Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia and Montana.

"After Roe v. Wade was overturned, we had to turn to state courts and state constitutions as the critical backstop to protecting access to abortion," said Brigitte Amiri, deputy director at the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. "And the stakes are unbelievably high in each of these cases in each of these states."

The ACLU was among major spenders on behalf of Democrats in this year's state supreme court contests in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Another big player in recent court races has been the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has said its focus is mainly on redistricting, or the drawing of political district boundaries. The group called state supreme courts the "last line of defense against far-left national groups," but didn't say how much it intends to spend on next year's races or which states it's focusing on.

In Ohio, Democrats are expected to cast state supreme court races as an extension of the November election in which voters enshrined the right to abortion in the state constitution. The state has more than 30 abortion restrictions in place that could be challenged now that the amendment has passed.

"The state supreme court is going to be the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the new constitutional amendment that the people voted for and organized around," said Jessie Hill, law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a consultant for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights. "That is a huge amount of power."

With three seats up for a vote and a current Republican majority of 4-3, Democrats have an opportunity to flip the majority of the court while Republicans will try to expand their control. Hill said the "very high-stakes election" will serve as another test of the salience of the abortion issue in turning out voters.

"We saw an incredible number of voters come out to vote on that amendment and an incredible amount of investment in those campaigns," Hill added. "I think we'll see a similar attention and investment in Ohio come next year."

Redistricting also is likely to be a main focus in the state's supreme court races, given the court will have realigned politically since it issued a series of rulings finding Ohio's congressional and legislative maps unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans, said David Niven, political science professor at the University of Cincinnati. He expects millions of dollars to be spent on those campaigns.

"There's often little conversation about these races, but they are just so utterly consequential in very tangible, practical ways that touch voters' everyday lives," he said.

## MAP BROADENS FOR CONSEQUENTIAL RACES
Pending legislative and congressional redistricting cases also could play a role in North Carolina.

Republicans in North Carolina are looking to expand their majority two years after the court flipped from Democratic control in the 2022 election. That flip to a 5-2 GOP majority led to dramatic reversals in 2023 on rulings made by the previous court, which had struck down a 2018 photo voter identification law as well as district maps for the General Assembly and the state's congressional delegation.

Groups on both sides also are expected to focus on Michigan, where Democrats hold a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court. Candidates run without political affiliations listed on the ballot, though they're nominated by political parties.

Two incumbents - one Democrat, one Republican - will be up for election in 2024. The court recently kept former President Donald Trump on the state's ballot, denying a liberal group's request to kick him off. It is currently weighing a high-profile case over a Republican legislative maneuver that gutted a minimum wage hike backed by voters.

## 2023 RACES A PREVIEW
In Wisconsin, abortion played a dominant role in the 2023 court race, with Democrats flipping the court to a 4-3 majority in a campaign that shattered previous national records for spending in state supreme court elections.

Liberal-leaning Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly, who previously worked for Republicans and had support from the state's leading anti-abortion groups.

Protasiewicz was targeted with impeachment threats this year over comments she made on the campaign trail about redistricting as Republicans argued she had prejudged what then was an expected case on the state's heavily gerrymandered state legislative districts. Experts say the controversy is an example of how more money and attention have changed the dynamics of many state supreme court races to be increasingly partisan.

Democrats in Pennsylvania added to their majority on the court after a race with tens of millions of dollars in spending. Democrat Dan McCaffery won after positioning himself as a strong defender of abortion rights.

## CONTESTED SEATS EVEN IN DEEP RED STATES
It remains to be seen whether abortion rights will play a factor in states where party control isn't at stake. That includes Arkansas, where the court is expected to maintain its 4-3 conservative majority. The seats up next year include the chief justice position, which has drawn three sitting justices.

A fight over abortion could wind up before the court, with a group trying to put a measure on the ballot next year that would scale back a state ban on the procedure that took effect once Roe was overturned.

Abortion rights supporters also aren't writing off longshot states such as Texas and its all-Republican high court, which rejected the request from a pregnant woman whose fetus had a fatal condition to be exempted from the state's strict abortion ban.

In Montana, Republicans have spent huge sums to try to push the court in a more conservative direction. The liberal-leaning court is expected to hear cases related to restrictions on transgender youth and abortion. A landmark climate change case also is pending before the court, which will have two of its seven seats up for election.

Jeremiah Lynch, a former federal magistrate running for the open chief justice position, has cast himself as a defender of the court's independence and has warned voters to expect a barrage of negative advertising. Cory Swanson, a county attorney also running for the post, announced his bid on a conservative talk show and recently vowed to weed out any "radicalized" applicants for law clerks in response to antisemitism on college campuses.

In West Virginia, where conservatives have a current 5-4 majority on the court and two seats will be up for grabs, GOP chair Elgine McArdle said Republicans aim to focus more on judicial races than in years past.

"One area the state party has never really engaged much in is nonpartisan races, including the judicial races," McArdle said. "That won't be the case this time around."


# Election officials see a range of threats in 2024, from hostile countries to conspiracy theorists
By **CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY**
December 28, 2023. 9:20 AM EST

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**ATLANTA (AP)** - For election officials preparing for the 2024 presidential election, the list of security challenges just keeps growing.

Many of the concerns from four years ago persist: the potential for cyberattacks targeting voter registration systems or websites that report unofficial results, and equipment problems or human errors being amplified by those seeking to undermine confidence in the outcome.

Add to that the fresh risks that have developed since the 2020 election and the false claims of widespread fraud being spread by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies. Death threats directed at election workers and breaches of voting equipment inside election offices have raised questions about safety and security. Some states have altered their voting and election laws, expanded legislative control of local elections and added penalties for election workers who violate rules.

The turmoil has contributed to a wave of retirements and resignations among election staff, creating a vacuum of institutional knowledge in some local election offices.

With Trump running again and already warning that the 2024 vote is "on its way to being another rigged election," election workers are bracing for a difficult year that will have no margin for error.

## FOREIGN THREATS
National security experts have warned for years that foreign governments - primarily Russia, China and Iran - want to undermine the U.S. and see elections as a pathway to do it.

In 2016, Russia sought to interfere with a multi-pronged effort that included accessing and releasing Democratic emails and scanning state voter registration systems for vulnerabilities. Four years later, Iranian hackers obtained voter data and used it to send misleading emails.

In 2022, there were multiple instances in which hackers linked to Iran, China and Russia connected to election infrastructure, scanned state government websites and copied voter information, according to a recent declassified report.

While there has been no evidence of any compromises affecting the integrity of U.S. elections, experts say those countries are more motivated than ever given tensions across the globe.

"Election 2024 may be the first presidential election during which multiple authoritarian actors simultaneously attempt to interfere with and influence an election outcome," Microsoft warned in a November threat assessment.

The company said it was unlikely that Russia, China and Iran would sit out next year's contest because the "stakes are simply too high." The report said Russia remains "the most committed and capable threat to the 2024 election," with the Kremlin seeing next year's vote as a "must-win political warfare battle" that could determine the outcome of its war against Ukraine.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said she believes foreign adversaries have a "greater incentive than ever before" to get involved in the upcoming elections.

"We're going to do everything we can to be prepared, but we are facing well-funded, serious adversaries, and that requires all of us to be clear-eyed about those challenges -- and for voters to also know that there are foreign actors that want to influence their vote to further their own goals and not America's," she said.

## ELECTION SYSTEM VULNERABILITIES
Many of the conspiracy theories that have persisted since Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden relate to voting technology and claims that equipment was manipulated to steal the vote. There is no evidence of manipulation, and the systems have safeguards to detect problems.

An intensive effort has been underway for several years to build defenses around voting machines and tabulators and develop plans to recover if tampering occurs. Experts are particularly concerned about non-voting systems such as voter registration databases, electronic poll books and websites that report results because they rely on internet connections.

Experts have warned that a well-timed attack, perhaps using ransomware that locks up computers until payments are made or systems are restored from backups, could disrupt election operations.

Many local election offices have been moving their systems off countywide networks to protect them, but not all have. In early September, election officials in Hinds County, Mississippi, were preparing for statewide elections when everything came to an abrupt halt.

Workers in the election office were unable to access their computers for about three weeks. The breach of the county's computers caused a slight delay in processing voter registration forms and pushed back training for poll workers.

Local election offices, particularly in rural areas, often struggle to secure enough funding, personnel and cybersecurity expertise. Hinds County Election Commissioner Shirley Varnado said it was a "wonderful idea" to have their election office networks separated from the county but would take money they don't have.

"That should be done, but we're in a building without heat or air," she said.

Election integrity groups say more needs to be done and point to a series of voting system breaches since the 2020 election that have resulted in proprietary software being distributed among various Trump allies. They want a federal investigation and for authorities to force anyone with copies to hand them over.

They also worry about technical failures, noting an incident last November in which some votes in a Pennsylvania judicial race were flipped. The prevalence of false election claims has made it difficult to raise valid criticisms, said Susan Greenhalgh, a senior adviser on election security with Free Speech For People, a left-leaning nonprofit focused on election and campaign finance reforms.

"Our election system is not perfect," Greenhalgh said. "There are a lot of things that need to be and should be improved."

## INCREASED PROTECTIONS
Improvements since the 2016 election, in which Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton, include replacing outdated and vulnerable voting machines that lacked paper records of every vote cast. In 2020, an estimated 93% of ballots cast nationwide produced a paper record, up from 82% four years earlier.

After 2016, election systems were added to the list of critical infrastructure in the U.S. that also includes dams, banks and nuclear power plants.

In 2018, Congress established the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which provides security reviews. CISA Director Jen Easterly launched a cyber defense initiative in 2021 and last summer said 10 new regional election security advisers would be hired to work directly with local election offices.

"There's just been so much that has transformed the face of election infrastructure security over the past seven years," Easterly said in an interview last August. "In a space where people can sometimes get pretty down, I think we should be optimistic."

Larry Norden, an election expert with the Brennan Center for Justice, said he sees "massive progress" but also said turnover in local election offices has diminished institutional knowledge.

Just 29% of local election officials surveyed this year for the Brennan Center were aware of CISA routine vulnerability scans, and just 31% were aware of the agency's physical security assessments.

"There was not nearly as much awareness of the services that are offered as I think there should be," Norden said. "It's not surprising, but it means there's work to do."

## 'PERFECT STORM'
Staffing has long been a challenge for local election offices, which rely on both permanent and temporary workers, including those who staff some 80,000 polling locations nationally on Election Day.

But 2020 was a tipping point, with coronavirus pandemic-related challenges before the presidential vote and everything that followed: death threats, a flood of information requests from election skeptics, hostile county boards and new laws that impose fines or criminal penalties on election officials for violating rules. That contributed to a wave of retirements and resignations among election officials. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said two-thirds of county clerks there are new since the 2020 election.

"This all combines into this perfect storm," said Henderson, a Republican. "It's a real challenge."

Insider threats - the possibility that someone working in an election office could tamper with systems or provide access to them - poses another concern. To address this, election officials have been boosting security around key equipment by limiting access and adding surveillance cameras.

Meanwhile, the threats and harassment have continued. Georgia's Fulton County, a target of various 2020 election conspiracy theories, was one of several election offices in November sent envelopes containing a powdery substance that in some cases tested positive for fentanyl.

The letters are another reminder of the charged environment surrounding U.S. elections heading into 2024. Despite all the challenges, Henderson said election officials are doing everything they can to prepare.

"When you have a human-run system, there will be human error. That's just part of it," she said. "But we're working hard to make sure that we mitigate those human errors and mitigate the risks and continually improve our processes so that people can have the confidence that when they vote, only eligible voters are voting, and when they vote, their votes count accurately."


# Nikki Haley doesn't mention slavery when asked what caused the Civil War. She later walks that back
By **MEG KINNARD**
December 28, 2023. 1:47 PM EST

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**COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)** - Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked at a New Hampshire town hall about the reason for the Civil War, and she didn't mention slavery in her response. She walked back her comments hours later.

Asked during Wednesday night's town hall in Berlin what she believed had caused the war - the first shots of which were fired in her home state of South Carolina - Haley talked about the role of government, replying that it involved "the freedoms of what people could and couldn't do."

She then turned the question back to the man who had asked it. He replied that he was not the one running for president and wished instead to know her answer.

After Haley went into a lengthier explanation about the role of government, individual freedom and capitalism, the questioner seemed to admonish Haley, saying, "In the year 2023, it's astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word 'slavery.'"

"What do you want me to say about slavery?" Haley retorted before abruptly moving on to the next question.

Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, has been working to become the leading alternative to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. It's unclear whether her comments will have a long-term political impact, particularly among the independent voters who are crucial to her campaign.

She backpedaled on her Civil War comments 12 hours later, with her campaign disseminating a Thursday morning radio interview in which she said, "Of course the Civil War was about slavery," something she called "a stain on America." She went on to reiterate that "freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people."

Her GOP rivals quickly jumped on her original comments, even though most of them have been accused of downplaying the effects of slavery themselves.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' campaign recirculated video of the original exchange on social media, adding the comment, "Yikes." Campaigning in Iowa on Thursday, DeSantis said that Haley "has had some problems with some basic American history" and that it's "not that difficult to identify and acknowledge the role slavery played in the Civil War."

DeSantis faced criticism over slavery earlier in the year when Florida enacted new education standards requiring teachers to instruct middle school students that slaves developed skills that "could be applied for their personal benefit." U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate and DeSantis' then-rival for the GOP presidential nomination, rejected that characterization, saying instead that slavery was about "separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives."

Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump's campaign, sent out a release saying Haley's response shows she "is clearly not ready for primetime." The group also included an X post from Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a Black Republican who supports Trump, reading "1. Psst Nikki... the answer is slavery PERIOD. 2. This really doesn't matter because Trump is going to be the nominee. Trump 2024!"

Trump did not mention the two centuries of slavery in America at a 2020 event marking the 223rd anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. He instead focused on America's founding having "set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history."

Issues surrounding the origins of the Civil War and its heritage are still much of the fabric of Haley's home state, and she has been pressed on the war's origins before. As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview with a now-defunct activist group then known as The Palmetto Patriots, described the war as between two disparate sides fighting for "tradition" and "change" and said the Confederate flag was "not something that is racist."

During that same campaign, she dismissed the need for the flag to come down from the Statehouse grounds, portraying her Democratic rival's push for its removal as a desperate political stunt.

Five years later, Haley urged lawmakers to remove the flag from its perch near a Confederate soldier monument following a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white gunman killed nine Black church members who were attending Bible study. At the time, Haley said the flag had been "hijacked" by the shooter from those who saw the flag as symbolizing "sacrifice and heritage."

South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession - the 1860 proclamation by the state government outlining its reasons for seceding from the Union - mentions slavery in its opening sentence and points to the "increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery" as a reason for the state removing itself from the Union.

On Wednesday night, Christale Spain - elected this year as the first Black woman to chair South Carolina's Democratic Party - said Haley's response was "vile, but unsurprising."

"The same person who refused to take down the Confederate Flag until the tragedy in Charleston, and tried to justify a Confederate History Month," Spain said in a post on X, of Haley. "She's just as MAGA as Trump," Spain added, referring to Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.

Jaime Harrison, current chairman of the Democratic National Committee and South Carolina's party chairman during part of Haley's tenure as governor, said her response was "not stunning if you were a Black resident in SC when she was Governor."

"Same person who said the confederate flag was about tradition & heritage and as a minority woman she was the right person to defend keeping it on state house grounds," Harrison posted Wednesday night on X. "Some may have forgotten but I haven't. Time to take off the rose colored Nikki Haley glasses folks."


# Trump says he didn't know his immigration rhetoric echoes Hitler. That's part of a broader pattern
By **JILL COLVIN**
December 27, 2023. 2:01 PM EST

---

**NEW YORK (AP)** - Donald Trump has centered his unlikely rise from reality television star to onetime - and potentially future - president on the idea that he's wiser than Washington's bumbling political class, once going so far as to label himself a "very stable genius."

But when it comes to one of history's darkest moments, Trump is professing ignorance.

Facing criticism for repeatedly harnessing rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are "poisoning the blood of our country," Trump insisted he had no idea that one of the world's most reviled and infamous figures once used similar words. The Nazi dictator spoke of impure Jewish blood "poisoning" Aryan German blood to dehumanize Jews and justify the systemic murder of millions during the Holocaust.

"I never knew that Hitler said it," Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday, volunteering once again that he never read Hitler's biographical manifesto, "Mein Kampf."

"I know nothing about Hitler," he insisted. "I have no idea what Hitler said other than (what) I've seen on the news. And that's a very, entirely different thing than what I'm saying."

Trump's assertion that he knows so little about one of the 20th century's most documented figures is notable for someone seeking the presidency, a role steeped in and shaped by history. But claiming ignorance, particularly when it comes to people who espouse racist or antisemitic rhetoric, is a tactic Trump has repeatedly deployed when aiming to distance himself from uncomfortable storylines.

After he was endorsed by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke during his winning 2016 campaign, Trump insisted he had no knowledge of the white supremacist who had run for office numerous times and is described by the Anti-Defamation League as "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite."

"Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK?" he told CNN's Jake Tapper in February 2016. "I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists."

Asked if he would condemn the white supremacists supporting him, Trump said he would "have to look at the group. I mean, I don't know what group you're talking about." He continued to repeat that assertion even after Tapper said he was referring to the KKK.

## OTHER CASES
Trump has also pleaded ignorance in other cases. As he ran for reelection in 2020, Trump said he didn't know much about QAnon, the convoluted conspiracy that alleges Democrats are involved in a satanic pedophilia ring and casts Trump as the nation's savior - even as he retweeted accounts promoting the conspiracy.

"I know nothing about it," he said during an NBC town hall. Nonetheless, he refused to rule it out as false. "I don't know that and neither do you," he said.

It was the same when Trump was asked to condemn the Proud Boys militia group, which was key in organizing the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Enrique Tarrio and other members of the far-right extremist group have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other crimes for their part in the attack, which was part of a desperate bid to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

"I don't know who the Proud Boys are," Trump told reporters after instructing the group, during a presidential debate, to "Stand back and stand by."

"I mean, you'll have to give me a definition 'cause I don't really know who they are," Trump said of the group, which was drawing headlines at the time.

Trump has also suggested he was unaware of some of the most consequential periods of American history. At a recent rally in Reno, Nevada, Trump said he had to ask Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to define the post-Civil War era known as Reconstruction as he boasted about his growing popularity with Hispanic voters and Republican wins along the border.

"They say the first time since Reconstruction. You know what Reconstruction means? That means the Civil War," Trump told the audience. "I said, 'Give me a definition, governor, of Reconstruction. You said I'm the first one to win all of these towns since Reconstruction.' He said, 'Well, Reconstruction: since the Civil War.' That's a long time ago. That's pretty good."

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump "has been very clear that he's talking about criminals and terrorists who have crossed the border under Joe Biden's watch. When he's back in the White House, the United States will return to a secure border and a system that places the safety and security of Americans first."

## 'THE MOST SAVAGE CRIME'
The former president's claims about Hitler are particularly notable given his upbringing in New York, home to one of the nation's largest Jewish populations.

Trump has also participated in Holocaust memorial events. He spoke at a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2017, where he denounced Holocaust deniers as accomplices to "horrible evil." And he paid a brief visit to Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial, where he called the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews "the most savage crime against God and his children."

Trump's insistence that he has not read "Mein Kampf" - an assertion he also made at an Iowa rally last week - evoked a different Hitler book he once allegedly had in his possession.

Journalist Marie Brenner reported in Vanity Fair magazine in 1990 that Trump's ex-wife, Ivana Trump, told her lawyer that, "from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, 'My New Order,' which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed."

Trump told Brenner that, "it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of 'Mein Kampf,' and he's a Jew." Davis confirmed to Brenner that he had indeed given Trump "a book about Hitler," but it was "My New Order, " a collection of Hitler's speeches. "I thought he would find it interesting," Davis said, adding, "I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish."

"Later, Trump returned to this subject.," Brenner wrote. "'If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them,'" Brenner wrote.

## HISTORY
Knowing basic American history is important for a president, said Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer, who studies political history.

"We don't need a historian as president, but certainly you want a president with a feel for some of the basic parts of American history, of world history," he said, noting, for instance, that Reconstruction was a "a formative moment for civil rights and race relations."

In "Mein Kampf," Hitler wrote that, "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning."

Trump told Hewitt his message was "very different" and he had "zero" racist intent.

"I'm not a student of Hitler. I never read his works," he said. "They say that he said something about blood. He didn't say it the way I said it, either, by the way. It's a very different kind of a statement. What I'm saying when I talk about people coming into our country is they are destroying our country."

Still, he repeated "poisoning" references eight times.

Among those references: "They are poisoning our country. They are poisoning the blood of our country. They're coming from all over the world. They're coming from prisons. They're coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. They're terrorists. Absolutely that's poisoning our country. That's poisoning the blood of our country. And that's what's happening."


# Michigan Supreme Court will keep Trump on 2024 primary ballot
By **COREY WILLIAMS** and **NICHOLAS RICCARDI**
December 27, 2023. 3:21 PM EST

---

Michigan's Supreme Court is keeping former President Donald Trump on the state's primary election ballot.

The court said Wednesday it will not hear an appeal of a lower court's ruling from groups seeking to keep Trump from appearing on the ballot.

It said in an order that the application by parties to appeal a Dec. 14 Michigan appeals court judgment was considered, but denied "because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court."

The ruling contrasts with Dec. 19 decision by a divided Colorado Supreme Court which found Trump ineligible to be president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That ruling was the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

The Michigan and Colorado cases are among dozens hoping to keep Trump's name off state ballots. They all point to the so-called insurrection clause that prevents anyone from holding office who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the Constitution. Until the Colorado ruling, all had failed.

The Colorado ruling is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the rarely used Civil War-era provision.

The plaintiffs in Michigan can technically try again to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the general election, though it's likely there will be a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue by then. The state's high court on Wednesday upheld an appeals court ruling that the Republican Party could place anyone it wants on the primary ballot. But the court was silent on whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would disqualify Trump in November if he becomes the GOP nominee.

"We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court's decision," said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, the liberal group that filed the suit to disqualify Trump in the state. "The ruling conflicts with longstanding US Supreme Court precedent that makes clear that when political parties use the election machinery of the state to select, via the primary process, their candidates for the general election, they must comply with all constitutional requirements in that process."

Trump hailed the order, calling the effort to keep him off the ballot in multiple states a "pathetic gambit."

Only one of the court's seven justices dissented. Justice Elizabeth M. Welch, a Democrat, wrote that she would have kept Trump on the primary ballot but the court should rule on the merits of the Section 3 challenge. The court has a 4-3 Democratic majority.

Trump pressed two election officials in Michigan's Wayne County not to certify 2020 vote totals, according to a recording of a post-election phone call disclosed in a Dec. 22 report by The Detroit News. The former president 's 2024 campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the recording's legitimacy.

Attorneys for Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit group also involved in efforts to keep Trump's name off the primary ballot in Minnesota and Oregon, had asked Michigan's Supreme Court to render its decision by Christmas Day.

The group argued that time was "of the essence" due to "the pressing need to finalize and print the ballots for the presidential primary election."

Earlier this month, Michigan's high court refused to immediately hear an appeal, saying the case should remain before the appeals court.

Free Speech for People had sued to force Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to bar Trump from Michigan's ballot. But a Michigan Court of Claims judge rejected that group's arguments, saying in November that it was the proper role of Congress to decide the question.

Looking ahead to the next 14th Amendment decision, Trump's lawyers on Wednesday asked Maine's Democratic Secretary of State to disqualify herself from deciding whether the former president can be on that state's primary ballot. Shenna Bellows held a public hearing earlier this month on requests to bar Trump from the Maine ballot, and her ruling is expected this week.

Trump's attorneys asked Bellows to step aside, pointing to tweets that she posted after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol calling it an "insurrection" and bemoaning that Trump wasn't convicted by the U.S. Senate after being impeached by the House of Representatives.


# Nikki Haley has bet her 2024 bid on South Carolina. But much of her home state leans toward Trump
By **MEG KINNARD**
December 27, 2023. 8:18 AM EST

---

**GILBERT, S.C. (AP)** - Standing inside a rustic barn a short drive from the state capital, Henry McMaster shocked many South Carolina Republicans seven years ago by backing Donald Trump for president.

Then the lieutenant governor, McMaster became the first statewide-elected official in the country to endorse Trump in 2016. The event was in Lexington County, the adopted political home of then-Gov. Nikki Haley, who had repeatedly criticized Trump and endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Trump would win the 2016 primary in South Carolina and eventually the presidency. After campaigning against him, Haley would accept his nomination as United Nations ambassador, making McMaster governor.

That complicated history is coming to the fore as Haley mounts a spirited effort to become the leading Republican alternative to Trump. Her strategy is centered on a strong showing in next month's Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary before much of the campaign's focus shifts to South Carolina, where the Feb. 24 contest could be the last chance for anyone other than Trump to prove they can survive.

But her home state has shifted closer to Trump in the near-decade since she last ran for state office, threatening her ability to tap into her local roots to notch the victory she has promised.

"Ten years is an eternity when all politics are national," said Matt Moore, a former state GOP chairman. "Trump tapped into thousands of low-frequency voters who have reshaped South Carolina politics. Many of them weren't focused on state-level issues prior, or even now."

## Trump's grip on GOP
The former president this time has the endorsement of almost every major South Carolina Republican. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who ran against Trump, suggested he would destroy the Republican Party and openly questioned McMaster's thinking over the 2016 endorsement, is now a close ally of the former president and is co-chairing Trump's state campaign with McMaster.

South Carolina's lieutenant governor, state treasurer, attorney general and three of its six Republican U.S. House members all back Trump. The only congressman to endorse Haley is Rep. Ralph Norman, a longtime ally.

Trump drew an estimated 50,000 people to a sweltering Fourth of July rally in Pickens, South Carolina, in the strongly conservative Upstate. Haley, meanwhile, set a record for her campaign last month with 2,500 people along the state's southern coast, known for its wealthier and more traditional conservative set.

John Reed, a businessman from upscale Hilton Head Island who donated to Haley's 2010 campaign, backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. But he is supporting Haley this time because he says she offers a contrast from Trump's "divisive and disrespectful" tenor.

"I think Nikki's the best of them because she has abilities and experience," said Reed. "Trump's narcissism and pride and arrogance is just too much for the office."

Losing South Carolina would be a huge blow to Haley's campaign, which is counting on outlasting rivals like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and picking up momentum from people open to a Trump alternative. A home state primary loss has devastated previous campaigns, including Rubio, who dropped out of the 2016 primary after a blowout loss to Trump in Florida. Sen. Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the 2020 Democratic race after losing several primaries in one day, including in her home state of Massachusetts.

Lexington County, where McMaster endorsed Trump, is Haley's adopted political home and the area she represented in the state legislature. She came back to the same rustic barn in April to hold a rally for her presidential campaign.

She was little known when she launched a bid for governor against three high-profile candidates - including McMaster - running on a message of fiscal responsibility and going after what she described as entrenched powers in Columbia. She aligned with the "tea party" movement that arose during President Barack Obama's first term.

Her key endorsement in that race was Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who remained a powerhouse in GOP politics after her 2008 vice presidential bid. After also being backed by Mitt Romney, whose 2008 White House run she had supported, Haley nearly won the GOP primary outright and was victorious in the runoff.

## Haley's record
Haley points to several accomplishments during her six years as governor, including bringing economic investment and jobs to the state, requiring companies to verify the employment eligibility of their workers, and supporting voter ID laws. She's perhaps best remembered nationally for helping to persuade the Legislature to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds after a mass shooting in which a white gunman killed eight Black church members who were attending Bible study - although Haley had previously dismissed the need for the flag to come down.

Haley's presidential campaign points toward her previous popularity in South Carolina as a signal she will perform well when it comes time for her home state's voters to make their selection.

"South Carolinians first elected Nikki when she was the anti-establishment, conservative candidate for governor," said Olivia Perez-Cubas. "They know she has what it takes to win because they've seen her beat the odds before - not just once, but twice."

But Trump changed Republican politics in South Carolina and nationally.

That includes Lexington County, where the county GOP has been roiled for months by a legal battle between two people claiming to oversee it, a split within a recently elected slate supportive of Trump's "Make America Great Again" vision.

Michael Burgess, who served as a vice chairman for the Lexington County GOP and described himself as a "never ever, ever Trumper," said he felt the area's shift toward populism in the years after Trump's 2016 election.

"Lexington County is a microcosm of South Carolina," said Burgess, who teaches AP U.S. History at a local high school. "What we've seen since the 2020 election is a concerted effort by MAGA to take over the county party mechanism, and essentially, when they do that, to drive out long-term establishment Reagan Republicans."

Burgess, who said he voted for neither Trump nor Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 and supported Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, said he had initially backed South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott in the 2024 GOP primary, but now sees Haley as the party's best bet to defeat Trump.

But another person who supported Haley when she ran in 2010 now blames her for criticizing Trump in 2016, even though he supported her work as governor.

"When she came out and said, 'We need to ignore a lot of the loud voices,' that kind of really rubbed me wrong, because it was those voices that got her elected governor," said Allen Olsen, who founded a "tea party" group in South Carolina's capital city of Columbia. "Although I understood what she was doing, it really kind of felt like I got stabbed in the back."

State Rep. RJ May, a leader of the state's House Freedom Caucus, argued Haley is now more of an establishment figure due to her service as governor and then United Nations ambassador.

He said he doesn't see Trump the same way - even though Trump is now a former president running his third campaign for the White House.

"It's hard to take that lane from Donald Trump, considering the weaponization of the federal government that we're seeing," said May, who has not endorsed a candidate in the presidential primary. "One thing I don't think you can call Donald Trump is an insider."

But there are still people in South Carolina who have been waiting for Haley to run for the White House.

At the event in Bluffton, South Carolina, that drew 2,500 people, Veronica Wetzel donned a "Nikki 2024" hat she said she bought years ago. Now, she said she's ready to vote for Haley, in part because she wants to see Republicans win in November.

"I really don't know if Donald Trump can win," said Wetzel, adding she had supported Trump in past contests. "We need to put somebody in there who can win because the last thing we need right now is to lose this election."


# Police investigating incidents involving Colorado justices after Trump removed from state's ballot
By **COLLEEN SLEVIN**
December 26, 2023. 8:23 PM EST

---

**DENVER (AP)** - Police said Tuesday they are investigating incidents directed at Colorado Supreme Court justices and providing extra patrols around their homes in Denver following the court's decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot.

The Denver Police Department declined in an email to provide details about its investigations, citing safety and privacy considerations and because they are ongoing.

The department "is currently investigating incidents directed at Colorado Supreme Court justices and will continue working with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners to thoroughly investigate any reports of threats or harassment," the email said.

Officers responded to the home of one justice on Thursday evening, but police said it appeared to be a "hoax report." That case is also still being investigated police said.

The FBI said it is working with local law enforcement on the matter.

"We will vigorously pursue investigations of any threat or use of violence committed by someone who uses extremist views to justify their actions regardless of motivation," a spokesperson for the Denver's FBI office, Vikki Migoya, said in a statement.

In a 4-3 decision last week, Colorado's highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but had said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause was intended to cover the presidency.

The state's highest court didn't agree, siding with attorneys for six Colorado Republican and unaffiliated voters who argued that it was nonsensical to imagine that the framers of the amendment, fearful of former confederates returning to power, would bar them from low-level offices but not the highest one in the land.

The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.


# As social media guardrails fade and AI deepfakes go mainstream, experts warn of impact on elections
By **ALI SWENSON** and **CHRISTINE FERNANDO**
December 26, 2023. 3:57 PM EST

---

**NEW YORK (AP)** - Nearly three years after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, the false election conspiracy theories that drove the violent attack remain prevalent on social media and cable news: suitcases filled with ballots, late-night ballot dumps, dead people voting.

Experts warn it will likely be worse in the coming presidential election contest. The safeguards that attempted to counter the bogus claims the last time are eroding, while the tools and systems that create and spread them are only getting stronger.

Many Americans, egged on by former President Donald Trump, have continued to push the unsupported idea that elections throughout the U.S. can't be trusted. A majority of Republicans (57%) believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president.

Meanwhile, generative artificial intelligence tools have made it far cheaper and easier to spread the kind of misinformation that can mislead voters and potentially influence elections. And social media companies that once invested heavily in correcting the record have shifted their priorities.

"I expect a tsunami of misinformation," said Oren Etzioni, an artificial intelligence expert and professor emeritus at the University of Washington. "I can't prove that. I hope to be proven wrong. But the ingredients are there, and I am completely terrified."

## AI DEEPFAKES GO MAINSTREAM
Manipulated images and videos surrounding elections are nothing new, but 2024 will be the first U.S. presidential election in which sophisticated AI tools that can produce convincing fakes in seconds are just a few clicks away.

The fabricated images, videos and audio clips known as deepfakes have started making their way into experimental presidential campaign ads. More sinister versions could easily spread without labels on social media and fool people days before an election, Etzioni said.

"You could see a political candidate like President Biden being rushed to a hospital," he said. "You could see a candidate saying things that he or she never actually said. You could see a run on the banks. You could see bombings and violence that never occurred."

High-tech fakes already have affected elections around the globe, said Larry Norden, senior director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Just days before Slovakia's recent elections, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a liberal candidate discussing plans to raise beer prices and rig the election. Fact-checkers scrambled to identify them as false, but they were shared as real across social media regardless.

These tools might also be used to target specific communities and hone misleading messages about voting. That could look like persuasive text messages, false announcements about voting processes shared in different languages on WhatsApp, or bogus websites mocked up to look like official government ones in your area, experts said.

Faced with content that is made to look and sound real, "everything that we've been wired to do through evolution is going to come into play to have us believe in the fabrication rather than the actual reality," said misinformation scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the Federal Election Commission are exploring steps to regulate the technology, but they haven't finalized any rules or legislation. That's left states to enact the only restrictions so far on political AI deepfakes.

A handful of states have passed laws requiring deepfakes to be labeled or banning those that misrepresent candidates. Some social media companies, including YouTube and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have introduced AI labeling policies. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to consistently catch violators.

## SOCIAL MEDIA GUARDRAILS FADE
It was just over a year ago that Elon Musk bought Twitter and began firing its executives, dismantling some of its core features and reshaping the social media platform into what's now known as X.

Since then, he has upended its verification system, leaving public officials vulnerable to impersonators. He has gutted the teams that once fought misinformation on the platform, leaving the community of users to moderate itself. And he has restored the accounts of conspiracy theorists and extremists who were previously banned.

The changes have been applauded by many conservatives who say Twitter's previous moderation attempts amounted to censorship of their views. But pro-democracy advocates argue the takeover has shifted what once was a flawed but useful resource for news and election information into a largely unregulated echo chamber that amplifies hate speech and misinformation.

Twitter used to be one of the "most responsible" platforms, showing a willingness to test features that might reduce misinformation even at the expense of engagement, said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a nonprofit watchdog group.

"Obviously now they're on the exact other end of the spectrum," he said, adding that he believes the company's changes have given other platforms cover to relax their own policies. X didn't answer emailed questions from The Associated Press, only sending an automated response.

In the run-up to 2024, X, Meta and YouTube have together removed 17 policies that protected against hate and misinformation, according to a report from Free Press, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights in tech and media.

In June, YouTube announced that while it would still regulate content that misleads about current or upcoming elections, it would stop removing content that falsely claims the 2020 election or other previous U.S. elections were marred by "widespread fraud, errors or glitches." The platform said the policy was an attempt to protect the ability to "openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions."

Lehrich said even if tech companies want to steer clear of removing misleading content, "there are plenty of content-neutral ways" platforms can reduce the spread of disinformation, from labeling months-old articles to making it more difficult to share content without reviewing it first.

X, Meta and YouTube also have laid off thousands of employees and contractors since 2020, some of whom have included content moderators.

The shrinking of such teams, which many blame on political pressure, "sets the stage for things to be worse in 2024 than in 2020," said Kate Starbird, a misinformation expert at the University of Washington.

Meta explains on its website that it has some 40,000 people devoted to safety and security and that it maintains "the largest independent fact-checking network of any platform." It also frequently takes down networks of fake social media accounts that aim to sow discord and distrust.

"No tech company does more or invests more to protect elections online than Meta - not just during election periods but at all times," the posting says.

Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, said the platform is "heavily invested" in connecting people to high-quality content on YouTube, including for elections. She pointed to the platform's recommendation and information panels, which provide users with reliable election news, and said the platform removes content that misleads voters on how to vote or encourages interference in the democratic process.

The rise of TikTok and other, less regulated platforms such as Telegram, Truth Social and Gab, also has created more information silos online where baseless claims can spread. Some apps that are particularly popular among communities of color and immigrants, such as WhatsApp and WeChat, rely on private chats, making it hard for outside groups to see the misinformation that may spread.

"I'm worried that in 2024, we're going to see similar recycled, ingrained false narratives but more sophisticated tactics," said Roberta Braga, founder and executive director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas. "But on the positive side, I am hopeful there is more social resilience to those things."

## THE TRUMP FACTOR
Trump's front-runner status in the Republican presidential primary is top of mind for misinformation researchers who worry that it will exacerbate election misinformation and potentially lead to election vigilantism or violence.

The former president still falsely claims to have won the 2020 election.

"Donald Trump has clearly embraced and fanned the flames of false claims about election fraud in the past," Starbird said. "We can expect that he may continue to use that to motivate his base."

Without evidence, Trump has already primed his supporters to expect fraud in the 2024 election, urging them to intervene to " guard the vote " to prevent vote rigging in diverse Democratic cities. Trump has a long history of suggesting elections are rigged if he doesn't win and did so before voting in 2016 and 2020.

That continued wearing away of voter trust in democracy can lead to violence, said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks misinformation.

"If people don't ultimately trust information related to an election, democracy just stops working," he said. "If a misinformation or disinformation campaign is effective enough that a large enough percentage of the American population does not believe that the results reflect what actually happened, then Jan. 6 will probably look like a warm-up act."

## ELECTION OFFICIALS RESPOND
Election officials have spent the years since 2020 preparing for the expected resurgence of election denial narratives. They've dispatched teams to explain voting processes, hired outside groups to monitor misinformation as it emerges and beefed up physical protections at vote-counting centers.

In Colorado, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said informative paid social media and TV campaigns that humanize election workers have helped inoculate voters against misinformation.

"This is an uphill battle, but we have to be proactive," she said. "Misinformation is one of the biggest threats to American democracy we see today."

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon's office is spearheading #TrustedInfo2024, a new online public education effort by the National Association of Secretaries of State to promote election officials as a trusted source of election information in 2024.

His office also is planning meetings with county and city election officials and will update a "Fact and Fiction" information page on its website as false claims emerge. A new law in Minnesota will protect election workers from threats and harassment, bar people from knowingly distributing misinformation ahead of elections and criminalize people who non-consensually share deepfake images to hurt a political candidate or influence an election.

"We hope for the best but plan for the worst through these layers of protections," Simon said.

In a rural Wisconsin county north of Green Bay, Oconto County Clerk Kim Pytleski has traveled the region giving talks and presentations to small groups about voting and elections to boost voters' trust. The county also offers equipment tests in public so residents can observe the process.

"Being able to talk directly with your elections officials makes all the difference," she said. "Being able to see that there are real people behind these processes who are committed to their jobs and want to do good work helps people understand we are here to serve them."


# In battleground Arizona, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. draws Biden and Trump voters united by distrust
By **JONATHAN J. COOPER**
December 25, 2023. 8:25 AM EST

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**PHOENIX (AP)** - Some voted for Donald Trump, others for Joe Biden. A few had never wanted anything to do with politics before they heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on a podcast or YouTube video.

Lined up outside a Phoenix wedding hall tucked between a freeway, a railroad track and a U-Haul rental center, the hundreds of people who turned out Wednesday to hear Kennedy speak shared little in common ideologically. What united them was a deep-seated distrust - of the media, of corporations and especially of the government - and a belief that Kennedy is the only person in politics willing to tell them the truth.

"I like that he talks to us like adults," said Gilbert Limon, a 48-year-old pharmacist from Phoenix. "He tells you the majority of what you need to know. Whereas I feel like (other politicians) just give you bits and pieces to try to fit their agenda. I've had enough of that."

Voters are not enthusiastic about a Biden-Trump rematch, and alternatives like Kennedy or the No Labels third-party movement, which would typically be longshots, see an opening. Kennedy's appearance in a 2024 battleground state highlights how he could influence the election in ways that are tough to predict. Allies of both Trump and Biden have expressed concerns that Kennedy's independent bid could pull votes from their candidate in next year's expected general election rematch.

Candidates from outside the Republican and Democratic parties rarely make a splash, if they can make the ballot to begin with. But third-party candidates don't usually carry a famous last name like Kennedy's, or his existing network of supporters.

Kennedy made the stop in Phoenix as part of his laborious push to get access to the 2024 presidential ballot as an independent candidate, which he figures will require him to collect at least a million signatures across the country. Aides mingled in the crowd, filling up his petitions to qualify in Arizona.

Ballot access for independent and minor-party candidates is an expensive and complicated process, with each state setting its own rules. Campaigns usually hire people to collect signatures and often need a small army of lawyers to challenge access rules and fight back against others trying to keep the candidates off the ballot.

American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting Kennedy, has pledged to spend $15 million to help him get on the ballot in 10 states. Kennedy secured a victory in Utah, where the lieutenant governor pushed back the deadline to qualify from January to March after Kennedy filed suit.

Kennedy is a member of one of the Democratic Party's most famous families - his father was the attorney general for his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. But he's more recently built closer ties to the far right, where his conspiratorial and isolationist views are at home.

Enriqueta Porras, a 52-year-old physician from Phoenix, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020. She said she's torn about the third-party conundrum. She'd like to vote for someone she believes in, like Kennedy, but also wants to make sure Biden loses and may vote strategically.

"I don't want to be that person," Porras said, "but I feel like there's a lot at stake and that may just have to happen."

One of the nation's most prominent anti-vaccine activists, Kennedy has long had a loyal following of people who reject the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe and effective, and they form a backbone of his presidential campaign.

An organization that Kennedy founded, Children's Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines.

Rigorous study and real-world evidence from hundreds of millions of administered shots prove that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Deaths caused by vaccination are extremely rare and the risks associated with not getting vaccinated are far higher than the risks of vaccination.

Among the dozen Kennedy supporters who spoke to the AP in Phoenix, many share his view that corporations, especially drug companies, wield too much power.

Debra Sheetz first started paying attention to Kennedy when she was doing her own research on COVID-19 vaccinations.

"I've been listening to him for the last several years," she said. "I was so interested when he decided to make this big leap into politics because he has a lot of good ideas. He can really speak to what people really care about."

Sheetz, 71, voted for Biden in 2020, she said sheepishly, because she found him to have "more balance, a little more sanity" compared with Trump. But she was disillusioned by Biden's support for pandemic-era restrictions and what she sees as a loss of freedom to speak freely.

"We lost our First Amendment," said Sheetz, who lives in Ashland, Oregon, but has spent the past few years traveling the country in her RV. "The most important thing is the ability for free speech and free ideas to share. Other ways to look at things. If you lose that, authoritarianism is there."

Curt Eastin, a 65-year-old professional coach from Chandler, a Phoenix suburb, voted for Biden in 2020 but won't again. If Kennedy weren't running, he'd vote for Trump next year, he said.

"I like that I can trust him. I think he's honest," he said. "And even if I don't agree with him, I know that he came to his conclusions honestly. I can't trust any of the other people."

Kennedy is keenly aware that his fans avoid the mainstream media, where journalists often flag the falsity of his vaccine claims, in favor of free-wheeling alternative sources online. He said he's drawing support especially from young people but struggling with people in his own generation.

"The problem with the baby boomers, I think, is they get their news from MSNBC, Fox and CNN," he told the crowd in Phoenix, which responded with boos. "Whereas young people are getting their news from podcasts and other alternative sources."

Third party or independent candidates rarely do well in presidential contests. Even the most successful recent example, Ross Perot in 1992, didn't win a single electoral vote despite winning 19% of the popular vote.

Sometimes, minor-party candidates will get enough votes that partisans will blame them for tipping the scales to elect the popular vote loser, like Ralph Nader in 2000 or Jill Stein in 2016, both Green Party candidates.

"One of the biggest reasons I like him is because of his stance on partisanship in our House and our Senate, and I like how he wants to try and reunite both of them," said Michael Chacon, a 23-year-old student in Tempe who has never voted and still wasn't sure whether he will in 2024. "I think that's a really good idea. I think cooperation would go along way."


# Trump says he's eager to debate Biden in 2024, even if controversial commission plans events
By **JILL COLVIN**
December 22, 2023. 1:55 PM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - Former President Donald Trump says he is eager to debate President Joe Biden, even if the debates are sponsored by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. And he says he is open to debating a single Republican rival if a serious challenger emerges after the New Hampshire primary.

Trump, who has skipped all of the primary debates so far citing his commanding lead in the polls, was asked if he will debate Biden if named his party's nominee during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Friday.

"Oh will I look forward to that," Trump responded. "How about 10 debates?"

That's even, he said, if the debates are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which he and fellow Republicans have railed against for years.

"They are totally corrupt and they're terrible. With that being said, I would do 20 debates, even if it was organized by them. I would do as many debates as they want," he said. "I'd do a debate every night with this guy."

The Republican National Committee voted unanimously in April 2022 to withdraw from the commission's events, alleging biased, and required that candidates sign a pledge vowing to only participate in debates sanctioned by the committee. Trump, however, never signed the pledge.

The nonprofit was established in 1987 and has sponsored every general election presidential and vice presidential debates since. The organization outlines the rules for each debate and selects the locations, dates and moderators for the events.

Trump also said in the interview that he would be willing to participate in a Republican primary debate if the race comes down to just him and a single rival after the New Hampshire primary. Public polls currently show him with large leads in all the early-voting states, but Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has been gaining ground, particularly in New Hampshire.

"Yeah, I would, if it was very close, I would debate that Republican," Trumps said.

Still, Trump claimed he is "not worried" about Haley, who also served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration.

Biden's campaign has not yet committed to general election debates next year. Quentin Fulks, Biden's top deputy campaign manager, told reporters earlier this month that the campaign would "look at the schedule" that the Commission on Presidential Debates released in November, but that "right now" their "focus is on making sure we continue to build out a campaign and infrastructure that's going to be able to be competitive in 2024."

Trump has skipped all of the GOP primary debates, but has long said a general election campaign would be different.

"We have to debate," he told Fox News host Bret Baier in a June interview. "He and I have to definitely debate. That's what I love. The two of us have to debate."

The commission has set a schedule of three presidential debates to be held in college towns in Texas, Virginia and Utah between Sept. 16 and Oct. 9, 2024, as well as one vice presidential debate in Pennsylvania.

As president, Trump repeatedly accused the commission of unfair treatment and ultimately refused to participate in the second 2020 debate after a decision was made for it to be held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. National Democrats also expressed frustration with the commission in 2020, accusing it of failing to enforce rules when it came to Trump.

Biden's campaign, the commission, and the RNC did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump's remarks Friday.


# Tape reveals Donald Trump pressured Michigan officials not to certify 2020 vote, a new report says
By **The Associated Press**
December 22, 2023. 3:26 PM EST

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Donald Trump pressured two election officials not to certify 2020 vote totals in a key Michigan county, according to a recording of a post-election phone call disclosed in a new report by The Detroit News.

The former president 's 2024 campaign neither confirmed nor denied the recording's legitimacy, insisting in a statement that all of Trump's actions after his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden were taken to uphold his oath of office and ensure fair elections.

Trump has consistently repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election as he runs again for the White House. No evidence of voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election has since emerged in a litany of federal, state and outside investigations.

The Nov. 17, 2020, telephone call included then-President Trump, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Wayne County elections authorities Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, both of them Republicans, The Detroit News reported. Trump told the two canvassers that they would look "terrible" if they certified results after having initially opposed certification, the newspaper said. The two ultimately issued signed affidavits asserting their opposition to certifying Wayne County's results.

The newspaper said the recordings were made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann.

The report comes as Trump seeks the 2024 Republican nomination while grappling with multiple criminal indictments, including a federal case and a Georgia case tied to his efforts to overturn Biden's victory. As he campaigns for a return to the White House, Trump continues to repeat the lies that the 2020 election was stolen, despite multiple recounts and court cases confirming his defeat.

Biden won Michigan, with Wayne County, which includes Detroit, providing a trove of Democratic votes. As such, it was one of the key places Trump focused on in the weeks after Election Day in 2020.

"We've got to fight for our country," Trump said on the recordings, according to The News. "We can't let these people take our country away from us."

National GOP Chairwoman McDaniel, a Michigan native, reportedly said during the call: "If you can go home tonight, do not sign it," adding, "We will get you attorneys."

Trump is said to have reinforced the point, assuring the local officials: "We'll take care of that."

Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said in a statement Friday that Trump's actions were "were taken in furtherance of his duty as President of the United States to faithfully take care of the laws and ensure election integrity."

"President Trump and the American people have the Constitutional right to free and fair elections," Cheung said.

Trump sat Friday for a lengthy interview on conservative radio but host Hugh Hewitt did not ask about the Michigan report. Trump instead spent the interview clarifying his remarks earlier this month that he had "day one" plans akin to being a "dictator. " Asked directly on Friday whether he would rule as an authoritarian, Trump responded: "Not at all. No, I'm gonna rule as somebody that's very popular with the people."

Trump also doubled down on previous comments that people entering the U.S. illegally are "poisoning the blood of our country." He insisted he was "not talking about a specific group" and said he had not been aware that he was using rhetoric that Adolf Hitler used as German dictator.

"I know nothing about Hitler. I'm not a student of Hitler. I never read his works," Trump told Hewitt. Despite those denials, Trump insisted confidently that Hitler "didn't say it the way I said it."

Hewitt did ask whether Trump, if he were elected to another term, would willingly cede power when it concluded and he was constitutionally barred from holding office any longer.

"Of course. And I did that this time," he said, before reverting to his false claims of a rigged 2020 election.

The Republican National Committee did not immediately respond on Friday to The Detroit News' report around the 2020 telephone call featuring McDaniel.

The new disclosure of the recording appears to add details to communications with local officials referenced in the Jan. 6 committee's final report on Trump's actions after the 2020 election and leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on the day that Congress convened to ratify the Electoral College results.

That congressional report states that Trump and McDaniel called Palmer and Hartmann "about 20 minutes after" the two officials had changed their initial votes and agreed to certify the results. "The Select Committee doesn't know what President Trump privately said on that phone call," the report states. The committee states that Hartmann, at the time of the congressional inquiry, said that he was not pressured in a conversation he described as involving "general comments about different states." But the Jan. 6 committee emphasized Palmer and Hartmann's decision, made after Trump's call, to issue the signed affidavits reasserting their original opposition to certification.

The Michigan call would have occurred about six weeks before another call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. That conversation is among the key points in Trump's indictment in Fulton County that accuses the former president of a racketeering scheme to overturn Biden's narrow victory in Georgia.

"I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump told Raffensperger in that call. "Because we won the state."

Georgia counted its votes three times before certifying Biden's win by a 11,779-vote margin.

A recording of Trump is also at issue in a Florida-based federal case accusing the former president of mishandling classified information after leaving the White House. In that case, prosecutors allege that in a July 2021 interview, Trump showed people, who were working on a book about his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, classified information about a Pentagon plan of attack on an unspecified foreign country.

"These are the papers," Trump says in a moment that seems to indicate he's holding a secret Pentagon document. "This was done by the military, given to me."