More on Russian Influence Efforts

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are prominent influencers.

They are still at it in 2026

Steven Lee Myers and Dustin Volz at NYT:

Even as President Trump pursued a thawing of relations with the Kremlin this week, a covert Russian influence operation targeted the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, James Talarico, by spreading a fabricated claim of misconduct.

Several groups of researchers who track Russian disinformation operations attributed the claim to Storm-1516, a covert group that in 2024 peddled a similarly unfounded accusation against Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.

The attack followed a flurry of Russian posts on social media in recent weeks and provided the latest indication that Moscow is once again targeting an American election with online influence operations. In recent weeks, Russia has ramped up those efforts, according to a U.S. official familiar with classified intelligence assessments on the matter.

Most of the Russian content so far, spread by bot networks around the world, has targeted Democratic candidates, especially in closely contested Senate races that could determine control of Congress in Mr. Trump’s remaining two years in office. Still, the intelligence assessments do not specify that Russia is explicitly seeking to harm one political party more than the other, the official said.

“I characterize it to people as kind of same old, same old,” Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Wednesday, referring broadly to Russian efforts so far this campaign. The Russians are “throwing everything out there to generate a sense of chaos and anarchy” in the voting process, he added.

Mr. Himes said Russia was focused “in a bipartisan way” on trying to harm American politicians who had been supportive of Ukraine.

 

Measles 2026

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation. Among the most notorious peddlers of misinformation is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Troy Farah at Salon:

{The] U.S. is experiencing a severe failure to protect the public from measles, with vaccination rates continuing to fall. Yet Kennedy has been reluctant to promote vaccines, continues to cast doubt on their safety and upholds unproven remedies for treating measles, like vitamin A and cod liver oil. That advice has been associated with an increase in calls to poison control for vitamin A exposure, according to research published in June in JAMA Network.

Chris Dall, MA  Liz Szabo, MA  at CIDRAP:

The number of confirmed US measles cases has hit 4,588, more than doubling its total from last year, according to the latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

An additional 178 measles cases were reported this week, and over the past two weeks, 508 new measles infections have been confirmed. That’s more than the nation experienced from 2022 through 2024, when a total of 465 measles cases were reported.

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Though the CDC has acknowledged three measles deaths this year, Pennsylvania alone has reported five, with a sixth death currently under investigation.

Most of the confirmed cases (96%) have been in people who are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status.
True number of cases likely much higher

Since the beginning of 2025, there have been 6,877 confirmed measles cases in the United States, a number that will likely lead to the nation losing its measles elimination status later this year. Measles was declared officially eliminated in the United States in 2000.

But in a presentation today at IDWeek, a major infectious disease conference being held this year in Washington, DC, one infectious disease expert said he thinks the actual number of US measles cases is likely much higher than the official case count.

Andrew Pavia, MD, a pediatric infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Utah, said that because of underreporting, he believes the number of US cases since the beginning of last year is “probably greater than 20,000.”

Fake Polls

Many posts have discussed pollsters' challenges, including the plunge in response rates.  Outright fakery is another.

Jess Bidgood at NYT:

The pollster had been releasing surveys since June, shifting from one midterm battleground to another: Michigan. Maine. Kansas.

On Tuesday night, after the polling website FiftyPlusOne contacted the pollster, Wedgewood Polls, with questions about the authenticity of its surveys, the team behind the supposed data firm acknowledged that almost all of its work was fake. The whole thing, Wedgewood claimed, was an “experimental project.”

The fake polls were highlighted by well-known polling aggregators, including on the pages The New York Times uses to track surveys published by outside pollsters in key midterm races. The Times removed those polls Tuesday night and published an editors’ note that said it had included the Wedgewood polls — 15 in all — after the pollster answered a series of detailed questions from The Times about the pollsters’ identities, methods and funding.

It was the second time this year that fake polls have become news in the political world, underscoring the risks of misleading or false polling in an era of little-known data firms, hard-to-reach voters and suddenly ubiquitous prediction markets. It comes amid broader scrutiny of the way candidates have increasingly sought to use — or create — unreliable polling to serve their purposes, as well as larger questions over whether traditional polling can be trusted after high-profile misses

Social Media Use 2026

 Many posts have discussed social media. 

From Pew:

YouTube and Facebook are the most widely used social media platforms in the United States. About half of U.S. adults say they use Instagram, and smaller shares use sites or apps such as TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter).

 

The Myth of Widespread Noncitizen Voting

 Many posts have discussed immigration. Illegal voting by noncitizens is rare.

Jack Izzo at Snopes:

Noncitizens rarely vote in U.S. elections. This is not a partisan opinion. The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, concluded this in 2020 and reiterated the same conclusion in 2026

Supposed data that concludes the opposite is often wrong. That survey Trump cited in 2016 to claim that 14% of noncitizens were registered to vote? A 2015 statistical analysis of that study found the result was simply due to human error — out of a nationally representative sample, all the "noncitizens" who marked themselves as registered to vote were almost certainly U.S. citizens who accidentally recorded themselves as noncitizens when taking the survey.

In 2016 and 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal nonprofit organization, investigated 42 jurisdictions across 12 states to find out whether there was any truth to claims of voter fraud. Of the 10 jurisdictions across the nation with the highest population of noncitizens, the survey looked at eight of them.

According to the center's report, voters cast 23.5 million votes in these jurisdictions in the election. The institute counted 30 cases of suspected noncitizen voting that required further investigation. That's an occurrence rate of 0.0001% — similar to the odds of being struck by lightning in your life.

Under federal law, states are required to maintain and audit voter rolls regularly to ensure an election's integrity. As an example, Georgia was a focal point of the 2020 election. Trump claimed fraud and asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes," essentially asking him to flip the state's results. Raffensperger ordered an audit of Georgia's voter rolls in 2022 announcing that the state found 1,634 cases in which a noncitizen attempted to register to vote between 1997 to 2022, about 65 per year. But according to that report, none of the individuals in those cases ever officially voted, thanks to the existing protections that safeguard the voter registration process.

Congress and AI

 A number of posts have discussed congressional capacity, legislative productivity, and deliberation.

Katherine Tully-McManusat POLITICO:

Lawmakers are under pressure to pass legislation to address the threats from advanced artificial intelligence, but many have serious doubts they have the capacity to regulate the technology’s explosive growth.

Few are expecting lawmakers themselves — some of whom still proudly use flip phones — to become AI experts overnight. But while even congressional Luddites acknowledge there is urgency for Capitol Hill to quickly expand its expertise in tech policy to help with legislating, regulating and conducting effective oversight, there’s no consensus yet on how to achieve it.


“We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully,” Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) said in a recent interview.

Congress already has a long track record of lagging behind as technological innovations transform the world beyond Washington: It has adopted a largely hands-off approach to regulating the Internet as it integrated into everyday life in the past 40 years, relying instead on existing laws that govern other industries and taking smaller piecemeal bites.

The challenging political environment won’t help speed things along now: Democrats are split over whether the answer is to put guardrails on the AI industry or ban “superintelligence” entirely, while many Republicans — including President Donald Trump — warn that any regulation would stifle innovation and cede ground to China.

Some members consider themselves fluent in AI policy, including several who have joined working groups on AI policy. Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) have pursued masters degrees in AI and machine learning, in addition to many others who are self-taught.

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Some on Capitol Hill are advocating for an in-house hub — something like the long-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, which helped Congress understand emerging technology and its social and policy implications from 1972 until it was scrapped in 1995.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) has long championed efforts to revive the OTA for years and expects to reintroduce his legislation restoring the office in the coming weeks with bipartisan backing, spokesperson Austin Clark said.

Russia, Russia, Russia

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

Julian E. Barnes, Dustin Volz and Steven Lee Myers at NYT:

Less than three weeks from elections that could shift the balance of power in Congress, more signs are emerging that Russia and other foreign governments are once again seeking to influence American voters.

An online influence operation backed by the Russian government has been stepping up its attempts to sow division in the United States and inflame tensions around Israel as a political wedge issue, according to a new study by an independent company that tracks digital threats and foreign propaganda campaigns.

The influence operation known as Doppelgänger has created a flood of social media posts pushing themes of how bipartisan support for Israel is collapsing, according to Alethea, the threat intelligence company.

Doppelgänger is run by Russia’s Social Design Agency, a public relations firm. Both the U.S. government and the European Union have imposed punitive sanctions upon it.

On Wednesday, X, the social media platform, announced it had banned 13,000 accounts linked to three separate influence operations connected to Iran, Russia and China. The platform said the fake accounts amplified “content about U.S. politics, targeting candidates and public figures across the political spectrum.”

Michael Sinkewicz FOXBusiness:

President Donald Trump's decision to waive new sanctions on Russia is drawing sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, with several prominent GOP figures warning that the move could embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin as Moscow continues its war against Ukraine.

Trump signed an executive order Friday waiving key Russia-related sanctions and tariffs under the Graham Act, legislation he signed into law last month aimed at increasing economic pressure on Moscow.

The law, backed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., authorized tariffs of up to 100% on certain goods imported into the United States from major buyers of Russian oil and gas.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley reposted FOX Business' reporting on Trump's executive order, calling the president's decision a potentially defining moment.

There are certain decisions that will go down as history-defining moments. This is one of them. It's a terrible misjudgment of Putin, who has made it clear he wants to destroy the West. We shouldn't help him do it.

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) October 17, 2026