Politics
Elon Musk's X sues to block California law that aims to combat election deepfakes
X, the social media app owned by Elon Musk, has sued California in an attempt to block a new law requiring large online platforms to remove or label deceptive election content.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court this week, targets a law that aims to combat harmful videos, images and audio that have been altered or created with artificial intelligence. Known as deepfakes, this type of content can make it appear as if a person said or did something they didn’t. The law is scheduled to take effect Jan.1.
Assembly Bill 2655 was one of three bills California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law this year to address growing concerns about deepfakes ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. California lawmakers have been trying to mitigate technology’s potential risks but also face backlash from powerful tech executives wary of efforts they see as possibly restricting users’ online speech.
The focus on election deepfakes came after Newsom sparred online with Musk, who shared a viral video of Vice President Kamala Harris that used AI to alter what the Democrat said in one of her campaign ads. Republican Donald Trump, who had Musk’s strong backing in his successful run to reclaim the presidency, also posted deepfake images of Taylor Swift that falsely suggested the megastar had endorsed him.
X alleges the new law would prompt social media sites to lean toward labeling or removing legitimate election content out of caution.
“This system will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary,” the lawsuit states.
According to the lawsuit, the law runs afoul of free speech protections in the U.S. Constitution and a federal law known as Section 230, which shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content. X, which moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Texas this year, is suing California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber to block the law.
“The California Department of Justice has been and will continue to vigorously defend AB 2655 in court,” a spokesperson for Bonta said in a statement.
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and the secretary of state’s office said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who introduced AB 2655, said in a statement that he had reached out to X representatives to gather feedback about the legislation before lawmakers voted on it.
“I had hoped they would engage constructively with me during the legislative process. I was not surprised when they did not. I defer to the DOJ on any lawsuits,” Berman said in a statement.
Newsom’s office noted that AB 2655, known as the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, exempts parody and satire content. The governor’s office said it’s confident the state will prevail in court.
“Deepfakes threaten the integrity of our elections, and these new laws protect our democracy while preserving free speech — in a manner no more stringent than those in other states, including deep-red Alabama and Mississippi,” Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement.
X, though, alleges it would be difficult for social media companies to determine whether a user’s post was meant in jest, noting that opinions on the AI-altered video of Harris differed.
X along with social media giants such as Facebook’s parent company Meta, TikTok and Google-owned YouTube have policies about manipulated media. X’s rules bar users from sharing deceptive manipulated media that could lead to harm and says that in some cases this content may be labeled.
Although Musk has declared himself a “free speech absolutist,” the company’s approach to enforcing the platform’s rules is to restrict the reach of potentially offensive posts rather than pull them down. However, regulators, civil rights groups and users have criticized social media platforms, including X, for not doing enough to enforce their own rules.
With an increase in AI-generated election misinformation appearing on social media, the laws passed in the run-up to this month’s election were meant to bolster one California already had on the books, which bars people from distributing deceptive audio or visual media intended to harm a candidate’s reputation or deceive a voter within several weeks of an election.
In October, a federal judge blocked another of those laws, Assembly Bill 2839, while a legal challenge to it plays out. That law would prohibit the distribution of deceptive campaign ads or “election communication” within 120 days of an election.
And X has tried to block new California laws that target social media platforms before. Last year, Musk sued over another state law that requires platforms to disclose how they moderate content. X failed to block AB 587 but then won an appeal in September.
Politics
Sen. Sanders says he is looking forward to Trump 'fulfilling his promise' on credit card interest rates
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said he is looking forward to working with the Trump Administration and hopes that President-elect Donald Trump sticks to his promise surrounding the cap on interest rates.
“I look forward to working with the Trump Administration on fulfilling his promise to cap credit card interest rates at 10%,” Sanders wrote in a post on X on Friday.
“We cannot continue to allow big banks to make record profits by ripping off Americans by charging them 25 to 30% interest rates. That is usury,” he wrote.
Several X users praised Sanders and thanked him for backing Trump’s efforts.
NANCY PELOSI FIRES BACK AT BERNIE SANDERS FOR COMMENTS ON DEMS’ SWEEPING ELECTION LOSS: NO ‘RESPECT’
“Thank you for trying to focus on the potential good coming from the next administration instead of fear mongering,” one person commented.
“I did not have Bernie agreeing with Trump on anything on my Election BINGO Card,” another person commented.
“This is a moment in the history of our country that nobody should never forget. Wow! Trump and Bernie working together for the people of America! Maybe unifying this country is not impossible. Thank you Bernie!” another user commented.
The left-wing lawmaker, who is listed as a member of the Senate Democratic caucus, ripped the Democratic Party in the wake of Trump’s 2024 presidential election victory and accused the party of abandoning the working class.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the White working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders said in a previous statement.
BERNIE SANDERS EXCORIATES DEMOCRATIC PARTY, CALLS CAMPAIGN ‘DISASTROUS’ AFTER TRUMP VICTORY
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivers remarks on stage at NHTI Concord Community College before U.S. President Joe Biden on Oct. 22, 2024 in Concord, New Hampshire. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right,” he continued.
Sanders has characterized Harris’ campaign as “disastrous.”
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” he asked.
“Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?” he added. “Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”
While Republicans secured the Senate majority following the 2024 election, the 83-year-old Sanders, who has served in the chamber since 2007, just won another six-year-term.
BERNIE SANDERS SAYS HARRIS DROPPING FAR-LEFT POLICIES ‘IN ORDER TO WIN THE ELECTION’
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., talks to the media as he walks to the House chamber before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on March 7, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
“Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago,” Sanders previously said. “Today, despite an explosion of technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined a slew of Democrats taking offense to Sanders’ comments.
“With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for [Sanders], for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class families. That’s where we are,” Pelosi told The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast on Saturday.
Pelosi’s remarks came days after Sanders posted on X that Democrats’ loss should “come as no great surprise” after working class voters – first the White working class and then the Latino and Black working classes — looked elsewhere for change.
Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg and Taylor Penley contributed to this report.
Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital.
The politics of the area have also shifted.
For two decades its voters reliably leaned Democratic, but Donald Trump won the county in 2016 and again four years later, both times by solid margins.
Dwayne McDavitt, a retired prison guard and a Bikers for Trump leader, is one of the more visible local backers of the former president.
Before the rally in Scranton, he explained that he doubted the result of the 2020 election because he simply did not believe Trump could have lost fairly: “Tell me how Joe Biden could get 81 million votes.”
But Democrats hoped they could move the county back in their direction and made an intensive effort to do so.
County officials were vigilant leading up to Election Day. Luzerne County became a hotbed of election denialism in 2020, and Pennsylvania is an open-carry state. Some people feared voters might bring guns to the polls. Election workers were told they could bring their own guns.
The night before the election, a group of campaign volunteers organized by Jennifer Ziemba, the wife of the Luzerne County Republican Party chairman, gathered at Ziemba’s home in Harveys Lake, a prosperous community outside Wilkes-Barre.
They were calling Republican voters whose mail-in ballots had flaws like a missing date to tell them they had to cast provisional ballots in person.
“We’re not really MAGA-looking,” one of the women said. But they were staunch Trump supporters.
Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
“The women voting solely on abortion make me crazy,” Ziemba said. “I’d gladly give up my abortion rights and my daughter’s for my son not to have to go to war. We’ll have peace with Trump.”
Another woman, Lee Ann McDermott, who owns a real estate appraisal business with her husband, John, thinks the economy will improve under Trump. “With the interest rates high, no one was refinancing.”
On Election Day, most of the state’s counties shifted further to the right, tilting Pennsylvania and its 19 Electoral College votes to Trump by about 130,000 voters.
She was sitting in the front parlor of her Wilkes-Barre home, built by her great-great grandfather.
Wynn’s ancestors escaped slavery by fleeing to Pennsylvania before the Civil War.
The morning after the election, some of the Bikers for Trump gathered to celebrate at D’s Diner, in the Wilkes-Barre suburb of Plains Township.
A man they did not know, a retired financial planner named Kim Pace, approached their table. He began by saying that his wife did not think it was a good idea to talk to them. He had voted for Harris.
“Congratulations, guys,” he said. “I hope it all works out.” His tone suggested that he was doubtful.
Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
Dave Ragan, a U.S. Army veteran who had arrived on his motorcycle, stood up to respond. “We changed the world!” he said. “I don’t have to worry about my stepdaughter having a boy in the locker room.”
“Let me tell you something,” Pace said. “That stuff is overblown.” He wished them well and left.
Away from the table, he said, “If Harris had won, there was going to be trouble.”
In the days after the election, political tensions lingered in the community.
On Thursday evening, John McDermott, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, sat at home with his wife, Lee Ann, drinking a vodka and tonic after a round of golf. McDermott voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020.
This year, he voted for Harris. “I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him,” he said. “He’s a convicted felon. He believes in conspiracy theories.”
Lee Ann, a county council member, saw matters differently: She was one of the women making calls at Jennifer Ziemba’s house on the eve of the election. Now she was on her way to meet some of them at a restaurant to toast Trump’s win.
The mood was festive when McDermott arrived. “We’re getting Trumpy!” one of the women exclaimed, as they raised their cosmopolitans and glasses of wine.
Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
Among the revelers was Shelley Meuser, the wife of Representative Dan Meuser, whose district includes a part of Luzerne County.
“We got our country back!” shouted Terry Eckert, who is a real estate agent.
Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
Thirty miles down the road from Wilkes-Barre is Luzerne County’s other city, Hazleton. Its population of 30,000 is 63 percent Latino, an estimated 90 percent of whom are from the Dominican Republic.
There are at least six Catholic churches and many Pentecostal congregations in the community. One of them is the Iglesia Cristiana Agua de Vida Hazleton, where Elizabeth Torrez is the pastor.
Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
Philip Montgomery is a photographer whose work examines the fractured state of America. Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for the magazine since 2002, has written extensively on Pennsylvania and its politics.
Videos by Tre Cassetta.
Ranked choice voting suffered a blow as several states, including Nevada, Oregon, Colorado and Idaho rejected measures last week.
In Colorado, Proposition 131 would have created an open primary system for candidates of any party and the top four vote-getters would move on to the general election, after voters ranked their choices from first to last.
“The ranked choice voting movement has pushed really hard to convince everyone it’s a great idea,” data scientist Seth Werfel told Colorado Public Radio. “It has some merits but it’s not a slam dunk, and I think voters are skeptical of anything that they can’t immediately understand.”
In Idaho, Proposition 1 would also have ended the party primary system.
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A vote center in Anchorage, Alaska. (Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
It was rejected by nearly 70% of the voters.
“You need a scandal, you need corruption, you need something that’s happening statewide to make the case to pass something complicated like this,” CalTech professor Michael Alvarez told Boise State Public Radio. “I’m not super deeply immersed in the politics of these various states, but I don’t see that common ‘why’ there.”
Oregon’s ranked choice voting measure, Proposition 117, was rejected by 58% of the voters.
“Voters this year were reluctant to make dramatic changes to the way they vote,” Chandler James, who teaches political science at the University of Oregon, told Oregon Public Radio. “But I don’t think that it spells the end for ranked choice voting in the future.”
Voters in Portland, Oregon. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
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A similar measure in Nevada was rejected by 53% of voters. The same measure was passed by nearly 6% in 2022, but Nevada measures that require amendments to the state constitution don’t go into effect until they’re passed in two consecutive elections, according to the Nevada Independent.
Ranked choice voting is already used statewide in Alaska and Maine and places like New York City, but in Alaska a measure to repeal it looks like it could pass narrowly. Hawaii uses ranked choice voting for some special elections.
A voter in Denver, Colorado. (Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)
And in Missouri, voters approved a constitutional amendment banning ranked choice voting.
“We believe in the one person, one vote system of elections that our country was founded upon,” Missouri state Sen. Ben Brown, who sponsored the measure, previously said in an interview, according to NPR.
Other states that have bans on ranked choice voting include Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Florida.
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