Odds and Ends — 13 August 2024

The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic.
At ceremonies in courthouses, convention centers and sports arenas across the country, thousands of immigrants are becoming new Americans every week — and becoming eligible to vote in time for the presidential election this fall.

Elections Officials Battle a Deluge of Disinformation

On any given day, they are debunking claims that masses of dead people are contaminating the voting pool or that mail-in balloting is susceptible to fraud. In just the past year, they have been flooded with inane demands for details about their employees, faced harassment campaigns targeted at their female family members, received intimidating letters laced with fentanyl and been subjected to fake threats of bombings and break-ins.

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1823315434151546971

Trump’s Latest Falsehood Is a Huge Tell

When Donald Trump is at his most vulnerable, when he feels most threatened, he tells fans not to believe their own eyes and ears.
After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he called the event a “love fest,” denying the video evidence of the violence. After the writer E. Jean Carroll accused him of sexual assault, he said he had ‘never met’ her, despite a photo showing them together.
And yesterday, after Kamala Harris finished a week of arena-size rallies, he claimed that images of her crowds were ‘fake’ and AI-generated. Specifically, Trump embraced a conspiracy theory—touted by pro-Trump social-media accounts known for peddling nonsense—that the Harris campaign had posted a fake crowd photo from her August 7 event in Romulus, Michigan…
The turnout at Harris events is entirely real, and political analysts suspect that the crowds she has attracted are making Trump jealous and nervous. But the AI lie is about more than Trump’s size anxiety—it portends a dark and desperate chapter in this already distressing presidential-election season.

Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’

https://twitter.com/preparedwombat/status/1823167998502273415