When to Wade Into the Conspiracy Swamp

Today’s notice: How to deal with conspiracy theories, how to confront history on the campaign trail, how not to prepare for an election.

To engage or not engage is an age-old question for officials when it comes to conspiracies. But the speed and volume at which conspiracy theories have spread about Hurricane Helene and now Hurricane Milton caught many in the government off guard, threatening recovery efforts. So they attempted to engage.

As Milton made landfall, I called the White House to talk about Reddit. The Biden administration started posting on the social media platform this week, meeting some of the conspiracies about FEMA where they grow. A White House official told me somewhere between 3 to 4 million people saw a post from the administration explaining that, in fact, “FEMA cannot seize your property or land,” in the first several hours it was online.

The administration did not originally intend to use its Reddit account for debunking, but rather saw it as a way to talk about policy. You know, “Hi, I’m the White House policy shop, AMA.” But then the worst of social media reared its ugly head.

“The reason why we pulled up this launch is specifically because we saw so much of this misinformation percolating,” the official said. The White House, in conjunction with affected agencies, are regularly monitoring the conversation, and things reached such a level in the days after Helene made landfall that it required intervention.

That there is so much engagement speaks to how dangerously this stuff has spread. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “They control the weather” tweet wasn’t an outlier, but one of many prominent conspiracies spread by high-profile accounts. That particular claim so enraged Florida GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez who, while waiting for weather to hit his state, tweeted that MTG should have her “head examined.” Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents an area deeply affected by Helene, posted an extraordinarily detailed debunking document to his House website.

This is not normally how it goes. Republicans rarely want to shout down the most animated parts of their base (or politicians like MTG who are happy to do the animating). I called former Texas state Rep. Todd Smith, one of the few Republicans in the state who pushed back on a 2015 conspiracy about the Jade Helm 15 military exercise some claimed was an invasion by the Obama administration. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state authorities to keep an eye on things; Sen. Ted Cruz also entertained the conspiracy.

Smith, now backing Democratic Rep. Colin Allred to replace Cruz in the Senate, understands why some politicians tiptoe around conspiracy theories and maybe even say they’ll look into them. But at a certain point, a line gets crossed. He recalled his own time as chair of the legislature’s elections committee, which came during an intense debate over voter ID laws.

“This perception that had been spread, that we had busloads of illegal immigrants presenting themselves at the polls as someone other than who they were, and having an influence on Texas elections. There just was no evidence, period,” he said.

Smith didn’t speak out — instead, he tried to assuage his fellow Republicans to pass a law that “addressed it in some way but that caused no harm.”

Abbott and others were probably trying to do something similar to the Jade Helm panic, Todd told me. But embracing fears of invasion “showed an unwillingness to stand up to idiots,” he said.

So how did he know it was time to engage? When his fellow Republicans “were pandering to people who had just lost their minds,” Todd said.

—Evan McMorris-Santoro

Who Cares About Jan. 6?

If you ask people like Harry Dunn, Alyssa Farah Griffin and former Rep. Jim Greenwood, the Jan. 6 insurrection is all the proof anyone needs that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.

They all spoke to me on Wednesday, sharing the same message they’ve been hammering around the country: That day is evidence that Trump is unfit for office; That it’s a winning issue for Democrats up and down ballots; and that voters should refuse to let Trump-aligned Republicans off the hook.

The problem for the Dunns, Farah Griffins and Greenwoods of the world is that plenty of swing voters don’t know the details about Jan. 6, or worse, don’t care.

“I get caught up in this somehow, but inside the beltway, here in D.C., we think that everybody pays attention to Jan. 6,” Dunn said. “And with just the news in general, a lot of the independent voters, they just don’t know what happened.”

Still, Harrisworld has leaned into the issue (see: Liz Cheney’s endorsement, Tim Walz’s “damning nonanswer” moment at the debate and Joe Biden’s surprise appearance in the briefing room), and there’s a good reason for that: A recent Gallup poll shows that “democracy in the U.S.” ranks as the top issue among Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters.

But Greenwood said the final-stretch emphasis on Jan. 6 might be for nought. “If they were focused on that issue,” he said of swing voters, “they’ve already, probably made up their mind.”

Read the story here. | —Riley Rogerson

Front Page

• Harris Said She Wouldn’t Do Anything Different From Biden. Trump Is Using It as an Attack: Trump repeatedly brought up the vice president’s comments at a rally in Pennsylvania, even giddily showing a clip.
• Georgia Election Officials Are Reeling Over New Voting Rules: A slate of new rules, like a mandate on hand counting ballots, is causing big headaches for election officials on the ground — and could, ironically, make the election less secure.
• Even the Republicans Making the Case Against Trump Aren’t Sure Jan. 6 Is Swaying Voters: It’s unclear just how many swing voters are actually distressed about the day.

Georgia’s People Problem

Election officials in Georgia — those in charge of implementing a new regulation that requires a hand count of ballots — are scrambling to figure out how they’ll have enough people to work on Election Day (and likely the many days after).

NOTUS’ Ben T.N. Mause went to Georgia and talked to county officials who are, in a word, stressed about how to hire more people while keeping the employees or volunteers they already have. In Republican Forsyth County, an election official told Ben that the rule changes are weighing so heavily on election workers that one said if the courts don’t intervene and they have to hand count ballots, they would simply quit.

“We actually, just yesterday, had a manager and an assistant manager quit,” Anne Dover, the election director in Cherokee County, told NOTUS on Tuesday.

And it’s not like people were rushing to sign up before: What was once a job that was an act of civil service has become — like so many things — deeply politicized. Threats and harassment targeting election workers is on the rise.

“Logistics are not the greatest on trying to work this out,” Danielle Montgomery, the election director for Walker County, told NOTUS.

A lot of officials told Ben they’re waiting to see what the courts have to say before they finalize their plans with 26 days to go.

—Read the story here.

Number You Should Know

$1 billion

That’s how much Kamala Harris has reportedly raised in the 81 days since announcing her presidential run.

Not Us

We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by … not us.

• Elon Musk is stepping into state politics, with a $1 million donation, The Texas Tribune reports, to a Texas business group that supports Republicans in tight legislative races.
• Anti-trans ads didn’t work in 2022, but Republicans think this year will be different, Semafor reports.
• The Los Angeles Times did a deep dive on how L.A. became the country’s largest jail system.
• CNN spoke with anxiety-riddled, frayed-nerve Democrats.

Be Social

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