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President Donald Trump said on Monday he would nominate a new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by the end of the week and that more changes in his Cabinet may be coming.

Trump said last week he was seriously considering naming U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to the post to succeed Nikki Haley, who said on Oct. 9 she would resign at the end of the year.

“I’ll announce before the end of the week the U.N. ambassador,” Trump told reporters before leaving Washington for another series of campaign rallies a day before the congressional midterm elections.

“Administrations make changes usually after midterms, and probably we’ll be right in that category, too,” Trump added. “I think it’s very customary. No timeline. For the most part I love my Cabinet. We have some really talented people.”

Haley was the latest in a string of senior Trump administration figures to quit, although she made her announcement in the Oval Office sitting next to Trump, who praised her for doing “an incredible job.”

White House counsel Don McGahn’s departure was announced in August and he has left. Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency chief, resigned on July 5 under fire over ethics controversies.

In response to reporters’ questions as he left for a rally in Cleveland, Trump said he was not planning to replace Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Last month, Trump said Mattis “may leave” and that he regarded him as “sort of a Democrat.”

He also said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was doing a “good job.” Zinke has been under at least three probes by the Interior Department’s inspector general over ethics questions. Last month, the inspector general sent one of the probes to the Justice Department, increasing the chances that Zinke could face a criminal investigation.

Trump did not answer when asked about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom he has frequently criticized.
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Sharply divided U.S. voters head to the polls Tuesday to elect a new Congress and to render a midterm judgment on President Donald Trump. The results of Tuesday’s election could shift the balance of power in Washington and alter the next two years of Trump’s presidency, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.
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Using Air Force One as a campaign shuttle, U.S. President Donald Trump traveled to Ohio, Indiana and Missouri on Monday, the eve of midterm balloting that is perceived as the biggest referendum yet on his presidency.

Trump acknowledged as much earlier in the day on a conference call with supporters, saying the media views Tuesday’s election as a referendum on him.

“If we don’t have a good day, they will make it like it’s the end of the world,” Trump said. “Don’t worry. If we do have a good day, they won’t give us any credit.”

There were 200,000 people listening on the call, according to Brad Parscale, the Trump/Pence campaign manager.

“There’s a great electricity in the air,” Trump told reporters just before boarding Air Force One for the flight to Ohio. “I think we’re going to do very well.”

Speaking in Cleveland — where he labeled candidates of the Democratic Party as “socialists” — Trump told the crowd that Tuesday is their chance “to send a message to the Democrat mob” and “stop the radical resistance in its tracks.” 

At a second rally of the day in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the president continued that theme, asserting that “if the radical Democrats take power, they will take a wrecking ball to the economy and the future of our country.” He also called on the attendees to vote for Republicans “to end the assault on America’s sovereignty” by Democrats.    

Trump then traveled to Cape Girardeau in the state of Missouri for a third, similar political event.

“It really is unprecedented,” said political science professor David Cohen at the University of Akron in Ohio. “No president has ever campaigned as much in the midterms as Trump has.”

Cohen told VOA that Trump’s strategy is unwise.

“His controversial remarks — all it does is energize the base of the Democrats and the independents to get out there and vote against him,” Cohen said.

Others see the Trump events — where Air Force One serves as the backdrop for appearances in airport hangars — of significant value to the governing party.

“The kind of people that come to them are not typical Republicans. They are Trumpsters. Getting that segment of the electorate out in 2016 was critical to Trump’s win in 2016, and getting them out to vote in 2018 can only help Republicans,” said University of New Hampshire political science professor Andrew Smith.

“Midterm elections are all about differential turnout,” Smith, who is also director of the UNH Survey Center, told VOA. “Democrats have been motivated to vote ever since Trump won in 2016, while Republicans have been far less motivated. Anytime Trump goes anywhere, he commands media attention and is therefore driving the news cycle.”

Obama appearances

Trump has been getting some competition for media attention in recent days from his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The two-term Democrat has been making campaign appearances on behalf of state and congressional candidates, a break with tradition where former presidents are rarely active in midterm elections so soon after leaving office.

“President George W. Bush has been largely absent from all politics, as was his father. And Bill Clinton waited some time after he left office before he got on the campaign trail. And when he did, it had the additional benefit of helping his wife’s campaign,” Smith noted. “Obama’s barnstorming is something that we have not seen, and I think it is an indication that he takes the Trump presidency as a rebuff of his own performance as president.”

In northern Virginia on Monday, Obama said “how we conduct ourselves in public life is on the ballot,” a lightly veiled criticism of Trump and some prominent Republican candidates.

“What I’m seeing all across the country is this great awakening,” Obama added, standing alongside incumbent Senator Tim Kaine and congressional nominee Jennifer Wexton in a campaign office. “In that great awakening, I feel hopeful.”

Predictions

Prominent pollsters predict the Republicans will retain control of the Senate. While cautioning some key congressional races are statistical dead heats, pollsters note more House districts trending toward the Democrats in recent days and expect Republicans will lose their majority in that chamber.

Such an outcome would halt the president’s ability to get key legislation approved, and would put the chairpersons’ gavels of committees in the hands of Democrats certain to launch an array of investigations into the Trump administration.

While Obama will deserve some of the credit for helping to drive turnout for the Democrats, according to Cohen, “it was going to be a bad election, anyway, for the president just based on his unpopularity throughout the country.”

Thus, if Republicans lose control of the House on Tuesday, Cohen contends, “the blame should fall squarely on Trump’s shoulders.”
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The big names were on the campaign trail Sunday, two days before a midterm election with control of Congress at stake.

Americans vote Tuesday for all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 35 of 100 Senate seats, as well as for numerous state governors, local offices and ballot questions.

President Donald Trump led rallies for Republicans in Georgia and Tennessee Sunday. Trump is not up for reelection this year. But Tuesday’s vote could be regarded as a referendum on his first two years.

Campaigning for Georgia’s Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, Trump said “radical Democrats want to take a giant wrecking ball to our economy and our future.”

The president told the crowd “Republicans produce jobs, Democrats produce mobs. ”

He warned Georgians that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – who is trying to become the first black woman ever to be elected a U.S. governor  – would turn the state into Venezuela.

Campaigning for Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly in Gary, Indiana, former Presided Barack Obama said it was his Democratic administration that started the economic recovery after the severe recession of 2008.

Obama said he created more jobs in his last 21 months as president than Trump has in his first 21 months.

Obama accused the Republican-controlled Congress of trying to turn back the policies and progress made under his administration. He also mocked Trump for saying he wants to help the little guy, followed by huge tax cuts for the wealthy.  

Obama also campaigned Sunday in his hometown of Chicago.

Political analysts predict Democrats will win control of the House Tuesday, while Republicans will keep their narrow hold on the Senate and possibly gain as many as two seats.

But with a huge number of people taking part in early voting, some analysts give Democrats a slight chance of winning the Senate too.

Democratic control of either body could hamper Trump’s legislative agenda over the next two years. Some Democrats have even promised to open investigations of the president’s business interests and finances.
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Voter enthusiasm is high and suspense is building before Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections that will determine which political party controls both houses of Congress as well as dozens of governorships and state legislatures nationwide. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Tuesday’s outcome will impact President Donald Trump’s ability to enact his agenda in the second half of his four-year term in office
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Voters in Massachusetts could give an important boost to a movement seeking to amend the U.S. Constitution to restore some limits on corporations’ political spending.

Voters on Tuesday are being asked to create a special state commission charged with weighing potential constitutional amendments that would overturn the Citizens United decision, which helped open the door to allowing businesses, unions and nonprofits to spend unlimited amounts to influence elections.

The question is part of a wider multistate effort to undo the 2010 Supreme Court ruling.

American Promise, the national organization behind the effort to reverse Citizens United, said 19 states have already signaled their support for similar amendments, most through resolutions approved by legislatures. Voters in four states — Colorado and Montana in 2012 and California and Washington in 2016 — also approved questions aimed at nixing the court ruling.

The voters in those states essentially instructed their congressional delegations to support an amendment overturning Citizens United, without offer specific language. In Massachusetts, which doesn’t allow statewide advisory questions, the referendum would take the step of creating a citizens commission to research the issue and suggest possible amendments.

The goal is to guarantee everyone has an equal shot at getting the ear of lawmakers — something he said the current political system fails to do, said Ben Gubits, political director for American Promise.

“It’s been a long trend in our democracy working for the folks that make large campaign contributions — wealthy individuals, corporations and some unions — while the rest of the average citizens don’t have a voice,” he said.

The call to overturn Citizens United has bipartisan support, Gubits said. His group counts members of both parties on its advisory council, which includes former Wyoming U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican, and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for president in 1988, he said. Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren have said they will vote for the question.

The group disputes that laws limiting political spending violate the First Amendment, Gubits said, arguing money doesn’t equal speech.

Not everyone agrees.

Paul Craney, spokesman for the conservative-leaning Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said the ballot question is wrong-headed.

“Is money speech?” he said. “Absolutely.”

But increasingly, Craney said, money isn’t the only way to amplify one’s voice.

“A lot of people out there have a big following on social media that can communicate with a lot of people, and it costs them nothing,” he said. “So more and more you’re starting to see that money is not the only way to have speech.”

The Citizens United ruling helped make it easier for corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money trying to persuade voters to cast their ballots for or against a candidate. While the ruling did not lift the ban on companies and unions giving money directly to candidates for federal office, it let them spend money trying to influence voters as long as the money was not being spent in coordination with a campaign.

Many groups have ramped up their political spending without publicly disclosing the sources of their money by forming “dark money” groups classified as social welfare organizations by the IRS. They can advocate for or against a candidate, run phone banks and donate to so-called super PACs. The nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics has tallied about $133 million spent so far this election cycle with no disclosure of donors, compared with about $177 million spent in 2014′s midterms.

The question would instruct the newly formed commission to recommend potential constitutional amendments to establish that corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as human beings and that campaign contributions and expenditures may be regulated.

Any resident of Massachusetts who is a U.S. resident could apply to serve on the 15-member, unpaid commission. The governor, secretary of the commonwealth, attorney general, House speaker and Senate president would each appoint three members.

Letting politicians appoint members is a problem, Craney said.

“Whenever you empower elected officials or politicians to regulate the public speech, the First Amendment is under attack,” he said.

The main task of the commission would be to release a report that would take a look at the impact of political spending in Massachusetts and any limitations on the state’s ability to regulate corporations and other entities in light of the Citizens United ruling.

The question also gives the commission the task of making recommendations for possible constitutional amendments and suggesting ways to advance those proposed amendments.

The proposed law would take effect Jan. 1, 2019. The commission’s first report would be due by the end of December and would be delivered to Congress and the president.

The group is hoping new amendment could be added to the Constitution by 2026, Gubits said — a process that would require its approval by two-thirds of the U.S. House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states, 38 in all.

“We passed 12 amendments in the 20th century alone,” he said. “This isn’t something that we used to do just back when people wore powdered wigs.”

There have been just 27 amendments added to the Constitution — including the first 10, the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791.
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President Donald Trump has been acting like a candidate on the ballot this week, staging daily double-header rallies and blasting out ads for Republicans up for election on Tuesday. Given the stakes for his presidency, he might as well be.

A knot of investigations. Partisan gridlock. A warning shot for his re-election bid. Trump faces potentially debilitating fallout should Republicans lose control of one or both chambers in Congress, ending two years of GOP hegemony in Washington. A White House that has struggled to stay on course under favorable circumstances would be tested in dramatic ways. A president who often battles his own party, would face a far less forgiving opposition.

On the flip side, if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate, that’s not only a victory for the GOP, but a validation of Trump’s brand of politics and his unconventional presidency. That result, considered less likely even within the White House, would embolden the president as he launches his own re-election bid.

White House aides insist the president doesn’t spend much time contemplating defeat, but he has begun to try to calibrate expectations. He has focused on the competitive Senate races the final days of his scorched-earth campaign blitz, and has distanced himself from blame should Republicans lose the House. If that happens, he intends to claim victory, arguing his efforts on the campaign trail narrowed GOP losses and helped them hold the Senate, according to a person familiar with Trump’s thinking who asked for anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss White House conversations by name.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has been tested out other explanations – pointing to historical headwinds for the party of an incumbent president and complaining about a rash of GOP retirements this year. He told the AP last month that he won’t bear any responsibility should Democrats take over.

At a rally in West Virginia Friday a defiant Trump brushed off the prospect of a Democratic House takeover. “It could happen,” he said, adding “don’t worry about it. I’ll just figure it out.”

Meanwhile his staff has begun preparations to deal with a flood of subpoenas that could arrive next year from Democrat-controlled committees and the White House counsel’s office has been trying to attract seasoned lawyers to field oversight inquiries.

Should they take the House, Democrats are already plotting to reopen the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Other committees are plotting aggressive oversight of Trump’s administration and his web of business interests. Some Democrats are looking at using the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain copies of the president’s tax returns after he broke with decades of tradition and withheld them from public scrutiny during his campaign for the White House.

A slim Republican majority in the House would also present challenges, likely inflaming simmering intraparty disputes. First among them would be a potentially bitter leadership fight in the House to replace retiring Speaker Paul Ryan. But a narrowed majority would also exacerbate divisions over policy – and continued unified control could leave the GOP facing the blame for gridlock.

“Clearly there’s an awful lot on the line in terms of the legislative agenda,” said Republican consultant Josh Holmes. “The prospect of a Democratic controlled House or Senate puts a serious wrinkle in getting anything through Congress.”

Some in the White House think losing to Democrats might actually be preferable. They view Democrats eagerness to investigate the president as a blessing in disguise in the run-up to 2020. They view House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a potent foil for Trump, and believe they can tag the party responsibility for Washington dysfunction.

Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s press secretary, said Democratic control of the House “has both peril and promise for the president.”

“The peril is subpoenas, investigations, legal bills and headaches,” he said. “The promise is Trump will have an easy foil to run against: Pelosi and Democratic leadership.”

White House aides have discussed floating popular legislative issues, such as infrastructure, to tempt Democrats and test the unity of the Democratic opposition.

While keeping the House remained an uphill battle for the GOP, in the closing days of the campaign, Trump and Republicans have tried to sell voters on the possibilities of another two years of GOP control. They promised hardline immigration policies and more tax cuts, arguing that Democrats would erase two years of progress.

In the closing weeks of the midterms, Trump has unleashed a no-holds-barred effort to boost Republicans as he dipped into the same undercurrents of unease that defined his 2016 campaign. From stoking fears about illegal immigration to warning of economic collapse if Democrats are victorious.

But a House loss will prompt GOP hand-wringing about the divides in the party and the struggles for moderate Republicans to run in the Trump, as well as raise questions about whether the Democratic gains point to a path for presidential hopefuls in 2020.

Democratic consultant Jim Manley said Tuesday may reveal if Democrats are having any success recapturing white working class voters in the Midwest who backed Trump in 2016.

“Trump is helping. He’s becoming more and more radioactive,” Manley said. “There’s a chance to try and win them back over.”

But while the results may reveal weaknesses in the Republican coalition, midterm elections are very different than presidential years. Republicans were quick to point out that the party in power typically suffers defeats in midterms. Former President Barack Obama was in his words “shellacked” in 2010 and went on to win re-election in 2012.

Said Fleischer: “In the aftermath people with exaggerate its meaning and in 2 years’ time everything will have changed.”
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As Americans prepare for another election, Russian troublemakers have again tried to divide U.S. voters and discredit democracy.

The activity appears focused on abuse of social media, through American-looking posts and sites, instead of big cyberattacks or disrupting voting systems. So far, it’s more modest than the influence campaign Russia is accused of carrying out in 2016, and Russia is not alone – it’s just one source of online manipulation ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Russia denies interference, and may not be able to affect the outcome anyway, but has reason to be interested in the election result.

U.S. officials and tech companies are trying to improve election security and fight disinformation campaigns online. Here’s what they say the Russians have been up to:

Funding trolls

One Russian has been charged so far by U.S. officials of interference in 2018 election campaign: Elena Khusyaynova, a bookkeeper with the Internet Research Agency, the “troll factory” accused of manipulating the 2016 U.S. campaign.

Khusyaynova is accused of a covert social media campaign for both the 2016 and 2018 votes in the United States. The criminal complaint says she began buying social media ads in 2015, including on Facebook and Instagram, and spent on internet services including VPNs, which help mask online activity. Khusyaynova also purchased social media analytics products, which gauge the performance of online postings, and paid bloggers and U.S.-based activists.

The proposed operating budget she oversaw was more than $35 million from January 2016 through June 2018 – including $10 million for the first half of this year, the complaint says.

It is unclear how many Americans saw postings financed by Khusyaynova’s activity.

Faux-American sites

The Russian troll factory’s owners, the Federal News Agency, registered three domain names in April aimed at the U.S. market, according to the SPARK-Interfax database. The websites all lead readers to a site called USAReally, aimed at showing American audiences news that has been “hushed up” by the mainstream media.

Its Russian roots aren’t hard to find. Its Russian chief editor, Alexander Malkevich, is openly critical of Democrats and says “America won” when Donald Trump became president.

Its readership remains small, in the tens of thousands, which Malkevich blames on “censorship” by Facebook and Twitter. It is trying to amplify its voice via links on other media.

In recent days, its focus has been on the migrant caravan weaving through Latin America, on tight congressional races – and on an effort to recruit Megyn Kelly, whose show on NBC was canceled amid controversy over her comments on blackface Halloween costumes.

Tricky tweets

Even after the February indictment by U.S. authorities of a dozen Russians linked to the Internet Research Agency, it continued to work on tricking U.S. audiences – including seeking to mobilize activists to participate in street demonstrations.

Twitter last month released millions of tweets and other content targeting Americans that it said came from the IRA, both from the 2016 race and continuing through the summer of 2018, well into the U.S. midterm campaign.

Examples of tweets include those from the account @TEN_GOP, which pretended to be Tennessee’s Republican party, and posted a photo of then-FBI Director James Comey with the words “resign now.”

It’s unclear how many people saw the content, which is no longer available on Twitter itself.

In August, Facebook and security firm FireEye revealed influence campaigns on the social network originating in Russia and Iran. Experts say Russia’s alleged actions in the 2016 U.S. election may have encouraged Iran to follow suit.

Probing candidates

Microsoft executives said recently that the company had detected attempts by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency to hack into the campaigns of two senators, and disabled Russian-launched websites disguised as U.S. think tanks and Senate sites.

One attempt involved Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who is seeking re-election in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016. Microsoft identified an attempt to steal the password of at least one McCaskill staffer through a fake Senate login website, in the most notable instance of attempted campaign meddling by Russia made public this year.

It’s not clear whether Russians are again targeting U.S. voting systems. U.S. officials have said that before the 2016 general election, Russian agents probed at least 21 state election systems.

 
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Former President Barack Obama’s national campaign tour to boost Democratic candidates takes an unusual path Sunday with an Indiana rally for Sen. Joe Donnelly, who has sounded more like Donald Trump while trying to persuade voters in the conservative Midwestern state to grant him a second term.

Obama’s rally for the Democratic senator in Gary will be sandwiched between his successor’s trips to the state Friday and Monday on behalf of GOP Senate candidate Mike Braun.

For Braun, a businessman who has campaigned as a steadfast Trump ally, the current president’s appearances in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne are no-brainers in a state he won two years ago by 19 points. But for Donnelly, who frequently touts how often he votes with Trump, the Obama rally is a little more complicated.

“If he does need to inoculate himself from some of his firmer conservative rhetoric, it’s a pretty effective way to do it,” said Christina Hale, a former state lawmaker and the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2016.

Donnelly has angered some Democrats by tacking to the right in recent weeks and embracing some of Trump’s pet priorities, such as building a border wall with Mexico.

Obama, on the other hand, has proven a polarizing figure with independent and Republican voters and is credited with some of Indiana’s rightward political shift, even though he won the state in 2008.

To win in Tuesday’s election, Donnelly not only needs high turnout from his party’s base but also must peel off some moderate Republicans and independents.

That’s why Sunday’s rally in Gary, a city that has more in common with the Democratic stronghold of nearby Chicago than deep red parts of the state, could prove strategic.

“While President Obama’s approval ratings are not great in much of the state, you can pretty safely bring into Chicago media market,” said Republican consultant Cam Savage.

Trump was keenly aware of Obama’s upcoming visit, which he mentioned Friday during an event at an Indianapolis-area high school.

“It’s no surprise that Joe Donnelly is holding a rally this weekend with Barack H. Obama,” Trump said as the crowd jeered. He later added: “We don’t want to go back to the Obama days.”

Like other Senate Democrats running in states Trump won, Donnelly has largely avoided bringing in political celebrities who are adored by the base but could create problems.

“Keep in mind he’s not bringing in Obama until the Sunday before the election,” said Hale, who added Republicans likely won’t have enough time to use it as an effective line of attack.

As a red-state Democrat, Donnelly has had a target on his back ever since he unexpectedly defeated Republican Richard Mourdock in 2012, when the former state treasure said a woman who gets pregnant from her rapist is carrying a “gift from God.”

He’s walked a delicate line since then, often frustrating his own party and Republicans alike with the votes he takes.

Trump was having none of it on Friday, tying Donnelly to “radical left” figures in the party who are widely reviled by the GOP base.

“This Tuesday I need the people of Indiana to send a message to Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and the radical Democrats by voting for Mike Braun,” Trump said as the crowd erupted in boos. “I’m really speaking more to the television cameras than to you because I don’t think we have too many Donnelly voters. Anybody going to vote for Donnelly in this room?”

The boos grew even louder.
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As U.S. voters prepare to head to the polls Tuesday, the election will also be a referendum on Facebook.

In recent months, the social networking giant has beefed up scrutiny of what is posted on its site, looking for fake accounts, misinformation and hate speech, while encouraging people to go on Facebook to express their views.

“A lot of the work of content moderation for us begins with our company mission, which is to build community and bring the world closer together,” Peter Stern, who works on product policy stakeholder engagement at Facebook, said at a recent event at St. John’s University in New York City.

Facebook wants people to feel safe when they visit the site, Stern said. To that end, it is on track to hire 20,000 people to tackle safety and security on the platform.

As part of its stepped-up effort, Facebook works with third-party fact-checkers and takes down misinformation that contributes to violence, according to a blog post by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO.

But most popular content, often dubbed “viral,” is frequently the most extreme. Facebook devalues posts it deems are incorrect, reducing their viralness, or future views, by 80 percent, Zuckerberg said.

Disinformation campaigns

Recently Facebook removed accounts followed by more than 1 million people that it said were linked to Iran but pretended to look like they were created by people in the U.S. Some were about the upcoming midterm elections.

The firm also removed hundreds of American accounts that it said were spamming political misinformation.

Still, Facebook is criticized for what at times appears to be flaws in its processes.

Vice News recently posed as all 100 U.S. senators and bought fake political ads on the site. After approving them all, Facebook said it made a mistake.

Politicians in Britain and Canada have asked Zuckerberg to testify on Facebook’s role on spreading disinformation.

“I think they are really struggling and that’s not surprising, because it’s a very hard problem,” said Daphne Keller, who used to be on Google’s legal team and is now with Stanford University.

“If you think about it, they get millions, billions of new posts a day, most of them some factual claim or sentiment that nobody has ever posted before, so to go through these and figure out which are misinformation, which are false, which are intending to affect an electoral outcome, that is a huge challenge,” Keller said. “There isn’t a human team that can do that in the world, there isn’t a machine that can do that in the world.”

​Transparency

While it has been purging its site of accounts that violate its policies, the company has also revealed more about how decisions are made in removing posts. In a 27-page document, Facebook described in detail what content it removes and why, and updated its appeals process. 

Stern, of Facebook, supports the company’s efforts at transparency.

“Having a system that people view as legitimate and basically fair even when they don’t agree with any individual decision that we’ve made is extremely important,” he said.

The stepped-up efforts to give users more clarity about the rules and the steps to challenge decisions are signs Facebook is moving in the right direction, Stanford’s Keller said.

“We need to understand that it is built into the system that there will be a fair amount of failure and there needs to be appeals process and transparency to address that,” she said.
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As U.S. voters prepare to head to the polls Nov. 6, all eyes are on how Facebook is grappling with giving people a platform to speak but also keeping misinformation in check. Michelle Quinn reports from San Francisco.
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Lights flicker into brightness, one-by-one in an empty boxing ring. It is silent until a gym bag plops to the floor. A woman puts earbuds in. Championship music blares and then a woman’s voice says, “This is a tough place to be a woman.” 

Sharice Davids’ TV commercial looks more like a movie trailer than a typical political ad for U.S. Congress in Kansas. But, Davids is no ordinary candidate.

The Democrat, running in Kansas for the 3rd Congressional District seat, is a Native American. She is lesbian. And she is a former mixed martial arts fighter. In her ad, Davids says, “Truth is, I’ve had to fight my whole life because of who I am, who I love, and where I started.” At the end of the ad, she nails a sharp right jab at the camera.

Scuba diving for votes

A record number of women are up for election Tuesday. According to figures compiled by The Center for America Women and Politics at Rutgers University, 237 women are running for the U.S. House of Representatives, 23 for the Senate, and 16 for governor. 

Political science experts, like Brigid Callahan Harrison of Montclair State University, say the current political climate has fostered numerous female candidates without political experience. Harrison says the Democratic Party specifically selected candidates with a “unique skillset, great narratives and resumes that are kind of middle of the road” to appeal to a new constituency, especially in swing districts.

Consequently, their ads are entertaining and provocative. Like Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell running for a House seat in Florida’s 26th Congressional District. Her TV commercial looks like a National Geographic documentary on coral reefs. Then, you see her, kneeling among the fish in full scuba gear, holding a sign “I’m Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. I’m running for Congress.” The ad promotes one of her top issues: clean water. 

‘Grow a pair of ovaries’

Republican Martha McSally is a member of the U.S. House from Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. She is running for U.S. Senate against another female House member, Democrat Krysten Sinema. McSally’s ad includes a clip of her TV profile on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” with Leslie Stahl introducing her as the “first female pilot to fly in combat.” 

McSally includes a comment from President Trump, mixed in with the fighting music and quick edits. She speaks straightforwardly about her time in Congress: “That’s why I told Washington Republicans to grow a pair of ovaries and get the job done.”

Going viral, courtesy of ‘Hamilton’

​Democrat MJ Hegar, running in the Texas 13th Congressional District, produced a video clip called “Doors.” Her biographical ad begins inside houses until the camera pans to a military-issued grey-green door hanging on the wall above her family as they eat dinner. Hegar, with her short sleeves showing an upper arm tattoo explains, “that’s all that’s left of the aircraft I was flying that day.”

In 2009, the Air Force pilot was flying a rescue mission in Afghanistan when her helicopter was shot down by the Taliban.

​

No more St. John suits, Ferragamo shoes

The trend in political ads is increasingly leaning more toward social media, because most younger voters choose to get their news there than conventional television. Hegar’s 3 minute, 30 second video clip has been viewed nearly 6 million times once “Hamilton” composer Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted it to his 2.5 million followers.

Chris Nolan is the founder of Spot-On.com, a cloud-based ad agency. Her company ran 25 campaigns for the 2018 midterm elections. 

She says this is the first election where women can “be themselves” in commercials rather than a perfectly coiffed person, ready for TV. She attributes that to the increased number of women running campaigns who understand that voters want to vote for “real people” and not candidates molded into stiff politicians.

“What that means is that we are moving away from the heavily produced candidate wearing a St. John suit, Ferragamo bow flats, and headband because she looks like a woman you’d never want to have a drink with,” Nolan said.

Double standards for voices

But, even in a social media age and in the 2018 political “year of the woman,” female candidates have to spend more time debating what is kept in and what stays out of their ads.

Republican Leah Vukmir, a Wisconsin state senator running for U.S. Senate, received death threats when she and other Republicans backed elimination of collective bargaining for public employees. The voicemail leads her ad, saying, “I know where you live and I’m going to come for you. You’re going to die and I’m going to be the one who does it.”

Vukmir told VOA the words are tame compared to what the caller said, but she wanted to use the words to show her resolve not to be intimidated.

Vukmir says, like most women, she knows there are certain standards for men and women in political ads, and she is extra careful of her vocal tone and how she speaks. Her model is former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who “learned how to moderate her voice so that she didn’t sound shrill.”
…

Twitter Inc. deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages that discouraged people from voting in Tuesday’s U.S. election and wrongly appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading tweets to the social media company. 

“We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesman said in an email. The removals took place in late September and early October. 

Twitter removed more than 10,000 accounts, according to three sources familiar with the Democrats’ effort. The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, a party group that supports Democrats running for the U.S. House of Representatives. 

2016 experience

The DCCC launched the effort this year in response to the party’s inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms that spread negative and false information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation told Reuters. 

While the prevalence of misinformation campaigns has so far been modest in the run-up to the congressional elections on Nov. 6, Democrats are hoping the flagging operation will help them react quickly if there is a flurry of such messages in the coming days. 

The tweets included ones that discouraged Democratic men from voting, saying that would drown out the voice of women, according to two of the sources familiar with the flagging operation. 

The DCCC developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social media, according to the three party sources. 

The system was built in part from publicly available tools known as “Hoaxley” and “Botometer” developed by University of Indiana computer researchers. They allow a user to identify automated accounts, also known as bots, and analyze how they spread information on specific topics.  

Free tools

“We made Hoaxley and Botometer free for anyone to use because people deserve to know what’s a bot and what’s not,” said Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science at the University of Indiana. 

The Democratic National Committee works with a group of contractors and partners to rapidly identify misinformation campaigns. 

They include RoBhat Labs, a firm whose website says it has developed technology capable of detecting bots and identifying political bias in messages. 

The collaboration with RoBhat has already led to the discovery of malicious accounts and posts, which were referred to social media companies and other campaign officials, DNC Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian said in email. 

Krikorian did not say whether the flagged posts were ultimately removed by Twitter. 

“We provide the DNC with reports about what we’re seeing in terms of bot activity and where it’s being amplified,” said Ash Bhat, co-founder of RoBhat Labs. 

“We can’t tell you who’s behind these different operations — Twitter hides that from us — but with the technology you know when and how it’s happening,” Bhat said. 
…

Congressional Democrats Friday asked the White House for more information about planning for a new FBI headquarters and released a government email that they said raises fresh concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of the matter.

In the latest skirmish between top Democratic investigators in the U.S. House of Representatives and the administration, five lawmakers sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly including the internal email from February 2018.

The Feb. 13 email included in the letter says a White House-backed proposal for a new FBI building at the agency’s existing headquarters site in central Washington would result in a “less secure facility” and have a “higher per seat cost” than an earlier plan to move the FBI to the suburbs.

Potential competition?

The letter was signed by senior Democrats, including Elijah Cummings and Peter DeFazio, who would take over leadership of powerful House committees if their party wins a House majority in Tuesday’s congressional elections.

“We have received the ranking members’ letter and are currently reviewing it,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said. The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal buildings, referred questions to the White House.

The FBI’s decaying, 1970s-built home in the J. Edgar Hoover Building is one block from the Trump International Hotel.

In their letter, the lawmakers reiterated concerns “with President (Donald) Trump’s direct involvement in the administration’s abrupt decision to reverse longstanding plans to relocate the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters.”

They said the administration’s support for keeping the FBI where it is on prime commercial land, would “block potential competitors from developing the existing property on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the Trump Hotel.”

They questioned “why the White House and GSA allowed President Trump to participate directly in a decision that affects his own personal financial interests.”

Higher costs to taxpayers 

The email shows, they said, that administration officials knew at least as early as February 2018 that constructing a new FBI headquarters on its present site would cost taxpayers more than relocating the agency to nearby Virginia or Maryland.

The members of Congress questioned why White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, in response to an earlier letter, said Oct. 18, “Once again House Democrats have it all wrong. The president wanted to save the government money, and also the FBI leadership did not want to move its headquarters.” 

Last month, the same Democrats sent a letter to GSA saying they had serious concerns about an “abrupt decision” by Trump to abandon earlier plans to relocate the FBI out of Washington.

Support for move as developer, not as president

In the earlier letter, the Democrats said that before he became president, Trump expressed interest in the FBI leaving its present home so he could buy the land and redevelop it.

After he was sworn in as president and became disqualified from buying the land, the Democrats alleged, Trump became “dead opposed” to the government selling the FBI property to other commercial developers who might compete with his nearby hotel.

In their latest letter, the Democrats asked Kelly to provide them by Nov. 15 extensive details on discussions, documents and communication between the White House, GSA, FBI and others regarding the FBI headquarters project.

The House committees on which the Democrats sit are now controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, none of whom signed the letter.
…

Days ahead of a contentious U.S. national election in which immigration has become a central issue, racist fliers saying “It’s okay to be white” have been reported on university campuses in five states, while synagogues in New York

and California have been sprayed with antisemitic graffiti.

The phrase on the fliers is associated with the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. The fliers have been reported at campuses including Duke University in North Carolina, Tufts University in Massachusetts, the University of Delaware, the University of Vermont and Iowa State University. In some cases, vandals attached the fliers to posters encouraging people to vote on November 6.

Meanwhile, after a gunman killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last weekend, graffiti saying “Kill all Jews” was sprayed at the Union Temple synagogue in New York City on Thursday night. Similar graffiti was found on an Irvine, California, synagogue earlier this week.

During the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue last weekend, the worst ever on the U.S. Jewish community, the man accused of the massacre yelled “All Jews must die.”

Robert Bowers, 46, an avowed anti-Semite, pleaded not guilty on Thursday in federal court to all 44 counts against him in the attack.

A post on controversial online image board 4chan last week called on participants to put the fliers up in public places. Some participants this week posted pictures of themselves with the fliers.

The universities affected condemned the fliers.

“We denounce these actions for what they are: cowardly acts of vandalism that are intended to intimidate,” Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president for public affairs, said in a statement.

“I want to assure our community that we do not tolerate hatred and bigotry,” Tufts president Anthony Monaco said in a message sent to his university.

Meanwhile, former KKK leader David Duke posted on Twitter that the “hateful response” to the fliers “proves ubiquitous anti-white hate & racism!”

A spate of politically motivated pipe-bomb mailings to prominent Democrats last week, followed by the synagogue shooting, have heightened national tensions ahead of the November 6 elections that will decide whether U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party maintains control of Congress.

The massacre also fueled a debate over Trump’s political rhetoric and his self-identification as a “nationalist,” which critics say has fomented a surge in right-wing extremism.

The Trump administration has rejected the notion that he has encouraged white nationalists and neo-Nazis who have embraced him, insisting he is trying to unify America.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump says U.S. troops have been dispatched to the border with Mexico to prevent a caravan of migrants from crossing into the U.S. At the White House Thursday, the president said “these are tough people. In many cases, you have young men, strong men.” He said “anybody throwing rocks…we will consider that a firearm.” Trump delivered his remarks before traveling to Missouri for a campaign rally on behalf of Republicans ahead of elections Tuesday. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
…

President Donald Trump implored voters Thursday to reject Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill and to instead install a Republican in her seat who would fully back his agenda.

Trump appeared at a rollicking campaign rally in Columbia, home of the state’s largest university, in an airline hangar draped in American flags. It was his second rally in an 11-stop, eight-state tour designed to boost Republican turnout ahead of Tuesday’s crucial midterm elections.

The president, accompanied by McCaskill’s Republican challenger, Josh Hawley, declared that Hawley “will be a star.”

Hawley, the current attorney general, sought to link McCaskill to Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who lost the state in 2016 by nearly 19 percentage points.

“Claire McCaskill has spent her lifetime in politics just like Hillary,” Hawley said. “Claire McCaskill wanted us to call Hillary Clinton ‘Madam President.’ On Nov. 6, we’re going to call Claire McCaskill ‘fired.’”

Four days until midterms

With four days to go until midterm elections that determine control of Congress, Republicans are optimistic they could make gains in the Senate, but they might struggle to maintain a majority in the House.

McCaskill is among a number of vulnerable Democrats running in red states. She is a top target for Republicans seeking to expand the party’s slim 51-49 edge in the U.S. Senate.

McCaskill is pitching herself as a moderate as she seeks to hold onto her seat. She has sought to distance herself from “crazy Democrats” and said in an appearance on Fox News that she supports Trump’s efforts to secure the southern border. Hawley has dismissed her efforts and argues that she is not the right fit for an increasingly conservative state.

Trump said that McCaskill has been “saying nice things” but that she “wants to get elected and then she’ll always vote against us.”

A check of her record, however, shows that McCaskill votes with the president about half the time, though she has opposed him on some key issues, including his tax cuts and the recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

​GOP momentum blunted, Trump says

Trump expressed optimism for the midterm elections, though he noted that Republican momentum had been blunted in recent days by “two maniacs” — a reference to a mail bomb scare and a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. He added, “We don’t care about momentum when it comes to a disgrace like just happened to our country.”

However, he noted, “It did nevertheless stop a certain momentum. And now the momentum is picking up.”

The president will appear twice over the next few days in Missouri, returning on the eve of Election Day to rally voters in Cape Girardeau.
…

President Donald Trump again stoked fears Thursday about undocumented immigrants and promised an executive order “sometime next week” that would severely restrict asylum-seekers who approach the southern U.S. border.

Speaking at the White House, Trump did not give specifics of his proposal other than to say migrants attempting to seek asylum must make their requests at legal points of entry, and that he wants to increase the detention of asylum-seekers.

The president made the claims five days before the U.S. midterm elections, when voters will determine which party will hold power in Congress and statehouses across the country.

“Under this plan, the illegal aliens will no longer get a free pass into our country by lodging miraculous claims in seeking asylum,” Trump said. “Instead, migrants seeking asylum will have to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry.”

Existing law 

It’s not clear how Trump’s proposal would work under existing law. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act states that an alien who is physically present in the U.S., “whether or not at a designated port of arrival,” may apply for asylum in accordance to laws.

He also did not clarify how he wants to detain asylum-seekers, but hinted that he wants to build tent cities and “we’re going to hold them right there” without providing details.

Trump insisted his plan is “totally legal,” repeating the term “invasion” that he has previously used to describe the caravan of several thousand migrants, many of them women and children, trying to enter the U.S.

WATCH: Trump: Migrant Caravan Should Turn Back

Rocks like rifles

The president also said there would be a crackdown if migrants were to throw rocks at U.S. soldiers, saying the troops would “fight back,” considering the rocks the same as a “rifle.”

“We will consider that a firearm,” Trump said, arguing there’s “not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.” He made the threat referring to a recent violent confrontation between migrants and the Mexican police at the Guatemala-Mexico border.

Speaking to VOA, former Department of Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge decried Trump’s use of the U.S. military. 

“They’re not trained to deal potentially with a group of unarmed immigrants,” Ridge said. “You put them and all law enforcement in a very difficult emotional, let alone security posture.”

Sarah Pierce, policy analyst for the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, refuted the president’s claims.

“Families can only be detained for 20 days and unaccompanied child migrants are not detained at all they’re actually transferred to a different government agency, the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” Pierce said.

Trump said that he is working on a system to keep migrant children together with their parents. He claimed, without providing proof, that former President Barack Obama’s administration separated children from the parents but “nobody talks about that.”

Several immigration experts have pointed out the Obama administration did not implement a policy of separating families.

​Immigration an election issue

Trump’s speech in the Roosevelt Room is his latest attempt to make immigration the central issue for Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Pierce said that the timing of the migrant caravan was “a political gift” to Trump because the issue of immigration had served him so well during the 2016 presidential election.

“Bringing up fear about immigrants and fear of this caravan will help push people to the polls to vote for Republicans, framing them as the party that will protect us from the situation,” she said.

A day before his speech, Trump posted a controversial anti-immigration campaign ad on Twitter and contended, without evidence, that Democrats allowed a twice-deported Mexican immigrant to stay in the country before he killed two deputy sheriffs in California in 2014.

The ad shows Luis Bracamontes laughing at a court hearing before he was handed a death sentence and profanely vowing, “I’m gonna kill more cops soon.”

Trump said atop the ad, “It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now!” The ad claimed, “President Donald J. Trump and Republicans are making America safe again!”

Also this week, Trump said he would send more than 5,000 additional active duty troops to the U.S. border with Mexico to block a caravan of several thousand migrants and said he might send thousands more troops. The migrants are still more than 1,000 kilometers (more than 620 miles) from the U.S., a distance that will likely take several weeks for them to walk.

Former DHS Secretary Ridge told VOA, “There are bigger threats” to the U.S. than the migrants. “Opioids are a bigger threat. The terrorists that send pipe bombs to political figures and journalists is a serious threat. The gunman who assassinates people on the Sabbath, …” he said, speaking to several U.S. news stories from last week.

On Thursday, Trump claimed this immigration crisis is largely caused by the U.S. having “the hottest economy anywhere in the world.” He underscored that asylum is to be granted based on safety considerations, not poverty.

“There are billions of people in the world living at the poverty level,” Trump said. “The United States cannot possibly absorb them all.”

After his speech Trump departed to a campaign rally in Missouri, where he is expected to highlight these themes again, as he has done in several rallies to support Republican candidates this month.

VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this story.
…

Democratic campaign promises of Medicare for All are resonating with many American voters who cite the rising cost of health care as a top issue in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, despite concerns over possible tax increases to fund a universal health care program.

During the Obama presidency, Republicans successfully ran against the perceived threat of a government takeover of the health care industry to gain control of Congress.

But a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows 58 percent voter support for keeping former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and that 8 in 10 likely voters from each major party want to protect coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer.

​Democrats on offense

Many Democrats running for office this year, like New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are advocating for nationalized health care legislation that was proposed in the Senate by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the 2016 Democratic nomination for president to Hillary Clinton. Sander’s plan would expand Medicare, a government funded health care program for senior citizens, to cover all Americans.

Others Democratic contenders like Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for Senate in conservative-leaning Texas, are calling for increased federal regulation to hold down health care costs but are not calling for a complete government health care takeover.

“The thing that is common among these different reforms is the structure of a government administered insurance plan that really controls or limits, to some respect, the payment rates that are paid to health care providers,” said Linda Blumberg, an Institute Fellow in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute.

​Republicans on defense

Republicans are on the defensive after failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which was enacted in 2010. Many are now claiming to support tenants of the ACA legislation that require insurance companies to provide coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions.

However, Blumberg says, it is disingenuous of many Republicans to make these claims while also supporting policies in the past that would separate the sick and elderly into separate “risk pools” with very high insurance rates that few could afford while charging lower coverage rates to younger, healthier people.

Four states will also vote on Medicaid expansion ballot initiatives offered under Obamacare that would extend health coverage for the poor, with 90 percent of funding coming from the federal government. The conservative governor of Idaho, C.L. Otter, has come out in favor of expanding Medicaid in his state despite concerns the costs to the state would greatly increase over time. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have voted to expand the ACA Medicaid coverage, while other states with Republican governors or legislatures have declined to take advantage of the program until now.

Opponents of government intervention in private industry argue that public support for universal health care will decrease significantly when confronted with the prospect of increased payroll taxes, the rationing of coverage, and bureaucratic delays that would likely result from a national health insurance plan.

“This is what happens when you have the government controlling health care costs, because now it is a singular consolidated entity making decisions on behalf of 300 million Americans,” said Meridian Paulton, a domestic policy studies researcher at The Heritage Foundation.

​Regulation versus competition

Conservatives continue to argue that promoting increased free market competition and innovation will work best to improve coverage and contain costs. However, the lack of health providers in many rural areas can limit competition.

President Donald Trump has attacked Democratic health proposals as socialism that would strip away funding from seniors who have paid Medicare taxes all of their working lives.

“Democrats support a socialist takeover of health care that would totally obliterate Medicare. Republicans want to protect Medicare for our great seniors who have earned it and who have paid for it all their lives,” Trump said.

Opinion polls show Democrats having a good chance to gain a majority of seats in the House of Representative in next Tuesday’s election, but not likely to take control of the Senate.

In a divided Congress, Democrats are not expected to have the votes to pass major health care legislation such as Medicare For All, but the election momentum could increase support for a compromised approach that regulates costs but also fosters private sector competition and innovation.

“We look at industrialized nations all over the world, many of them doing a mix of private and public insurance but making sure that there is a floor of care in coverage for everybody in the country, and those countries still take advantage of innovation,” Blumberg said.
…

Democratic campaign promises of Medicare for All are resonating with some American voters who cite the rising cost of health care as a top issue in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections. That’s despite concerns over possible tax increases to fund a universal health care program. VOA’s Brian Padden reports.
…

In a sprawling California congressional district that includes some of the nation’s richest farmland and part of one of its poorest cities, a first-time candidate, a Cambodian-American woman, is taking on a well-entrenched Democrat, a white man.

Neither reflects the 16th District’s majority, the 58 percent of residents who identify as Hispanic or Latino. Slightly more than 25 percent identify as white, like Rep. Jim Costa, the Democratic incumbent, and only 8.6 percent are Asian, like Elizabeth Heng, the Republican challenger. Blacks and others make up the remaining chunk of voters.

Republican Heng, 33, a graduate of Fresno public schools, Stanford and Yale universities, aims to flip the district, long dependably Democratic. 

“I truly believe that we need new voices with fresh perspective to fight for our community,” said Heng in an interview with VOA Khmer. Although this is her first run for an elected position, Heng is the first Cambodian-American to make it through a primary and run for Congress.

Costa, 66, has represented the district since 2013. He began his political career in 1978 in the California State Assembly, moved up to the State Senate, and from 2005 to 2013, served in the U.S. House of Representative for California’s 20th District, part of which moved into the 16th when district borders changed.

The Costa-Heng race, one he’s likely to win, drew national attention the first week in August after Facebook and Twitter yanked a campaign ad from Heng, who was a registered Democrat before turning right.

The ad showed footage of genocide in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime, which caused the deaths of at least 1.7 million people. Heng said her slogan “Great things can come from great adversary,” referred to her parents’ flight from Cambodia to the United States via Thailand to become successful small business owners in California.

Heng tweeted: “@facebook rejected my video because it was ‘too shocking’ for their platform, referring to the scenes of horrific events my parents survived in Cambodia.”

She also tweeted a copy of the notice she received from Facebook which states, “we don’t allow ads that contain shocking disrespectful or sensational content, including ads that depict violence or threats of violence” and asked “Facebook, do you think it’s right to censor history?”

Conservative outlets including the National Review, chimed in, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, from California’s 23rd Congressional District tweeted support and The San Francisco Chronicle reported conservatives were “irate” at Facebook with many claiming what happened to Heng was the latest example of tech companies trying to censor the right of center.

Facebook restored the ad within days, Twitter reinstated it by midmonth, and the race in California’s 16th returned to key issues such as jobs, water and immigration. And, in the crucial final weeks before the midterm vote, the Fresno Chamber of Commerce, the Merced Sun-Star and the Fresno Bee endorsed Costa, who despite repeated requests, did not speak to VOA for this story.

The 16th Congressional District has one of the lowest median household incomes, $43,839, in California, where the median household income is $63,783 according to 2010 U.S. Census data.

“So I believe it’s important for us to invest in areas such as vocational training and career technical training and trade skills,” Heng said. “So, we can provide our community and many people who are struggling in our community with the skillsets that they need to get to the next level, breaking out of this vicious cycle of poverty.”

Welding, electrical and plumbing skills for jobs in construction, and the computer training needed by the tech industry are what people need to get ahead, she said.

Growing up in Fresno

Heng grew up in Fresno. Her parents, mother Siv Khoeu and father Chieu Heng, arrived the U.S. in 1983 after living almost four years under the Khmer Rouge. They began their working lives in the United States as a construction worker and seamstress before saving enough money to buy a Fresno grocery store where Heng worked after classes throughout elementary, middle, and high school.

Heng, valedictorian of Fresno’s Sunnyside High School Class of 2003, attended Stanford University, where she served as student body president during her senior year. Heng, who majored in political science and American politics, told the school newspaper, the Stanford Review, in 2007 that she wanted to work on a presidential campaign and was interested in a career in politics.

After graduating from Stanford, she returned to Fresno where she opened cell phone stores with her brothers. It was when she was managing some 75 employees that she says she realized “how government regulations impacted businesses negatively,” she told the National Review in an interview published before her campaign ad controversy.

Time in D.C.

Fed up, she packed her bags and headed to Washington, where she eventually landed a job with the House Foreign Affairs Committee headed by California Republican, Ed Royce.

She recalls that was where she learned how U.S. foreign aid is distributed worldwide and how, during a visit to Cambodia, she was inspired to do more for the community.

“I realized how different my life could have turned out had my parents not sought refuge in the United States,” Heng told VOA. “And that was a perfect example of why I continue to dedicate my life to service and politics and empowering and holding to the fundamentals of what make this country, the United States, great, but also to use that to great work around the world including places like Cambodia.”

She decided to run for office when she returned to Fresno in 2017. As of Sept. 30, Costa has beaten Heng in the race for campaign contributions, $1,148,149 to $312,732, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The 16th District favored Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 presidential election by a margin of 21.3 points. Of California’s 53 House seats, Democrats hold 39.

Part of Heng’s effort to flip the district focuses on a get-out-the-vote campaign, so she knocks on a lot of doors. 

“We’re doing this every single day to turn people out to vote,” she said. “It’s so important for our community to get involved and so they can be a part of the process.”

Immigration a key issue

Heng, who has made immigration one of her key areas, repeated the Republican line that the current U.S. immigration policy is broken and says that she would work to protect the border and enhance security measure to “prevent criminals and terrorists” from entering the country, but encourage legal immigration, according to her website.

“Immigration is one of the top priorities in my campaign because as you’ve seen in the national media that something that we consistently talk about,” Heng told VOA. “I would love nothing more [than] to be on the forefront of immigration reform and getting that right for our country.”

Sophal Ear, associate professor at Occidental Community College in Los Angeles is a leading authority on Cambodia and the Cambodian diaspora. He said he hopes Heng uses the Cambodian-American narrative in a “meaningful way” and not “simply as a steppingstone for power.”

“Her family’s refugee story of struggle is not just something she ought to exploit for political gain as a Republican candidate,” he said. “She can’t just take that and serve President Trump’s agenda. She ought to remember that to whom much is given, much is expected.”

However, Heng told VOA she would not be “a rubber stamp” for any political party. “I know how Washington D.C. works,” she said. “I know how to hit the ground running to move legislative policy that works.”
…

President Donald Trump on Wednesday kicked off his final campaign rally blitz before the midterm elections by accusing the media of sowing division and stoking fears about illegal immigration.

Trump’s rally in Estero, just outside Fort Myers, was the first of 11 events he will hold across eight battlefield states over the next six days as he tries to bolster Republican turnout and counter Democratic enthusiasm heading into Election Day, which will determine whether the GOP retains control of Congress.

The president continued the grievance-airing that has long been a fixture of his rallies, seizing on news reports about protests during his Tuesday visit to Pittsburgh, where he paid his respects to the 11 people killed at a synagogue in the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.

Media and caravan

He said any protests there were small and far away from him, and he called reporting to the contrary “fake and make-believe.”

A small group of protesters was within earshot of Trump outside the synagogue, and hundreds more were kept blocks away by police. Some community leaders had asked Trump not to make the trip.

“The left-wing media doesn’t want to solve problems. They want to stoke resentment,” Trump claimed, adding: “It has to stop.”

At the rally, Trump also referenced a caravan of Central American migrants that is slowly making its way toward the U.S. border.

The president implored rallygoers to vote and painted a dark picture of the stakes, telling the crowd that if Democrats take control of Congress, they will raise taxes and open the country’s borders to illegal drugs and immigration, including the Central American migrants traveling through Mexico and seeking asylum in the U.S.

Democrats “want to bring caravan after caravan into our country,” he claimed, without offering evidence.

Stoking immigration fears

The president has been stoking fears that the nation is under attack from an onslaught of dangerous illegal immigrants and said earlier Wednesday that the number of military troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border could reach 15,000, which would bring the military commitment on the border to roughly the same level as in war-torn Afghanistan.

Trump this week also threatened to end the constitutionally enshrined right of birthright citizenship via executive order and announced plans to erect tent cities to house asylum seekers, even as his administration has been discussing a dramatic executive overhaul of immigration policy that would bar those in the caravan from entering the U.S. completely.

​First of two Florida rallies

The rally was the first of two this week in Florida, where Republican Gov. Rick Scott is challenging Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson for U.S. Senate and where Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis are locked in a tight race to replace Scott as governor.

Both Scott and DeSantis joined the president at the rally, where Trump offered his enthusiastic endorsement.

“Rick Scott always delivers for the people of Florida,” Trump said as he introduced the governor.

​On the road

Trump’s last-stretch rally lineup will include two rallies each in Indiana and Missouri, plus stops in a Pensacola, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio, Montana and West Virginia.

While Trump is not on the ballot, both Democratic and Republican strategists have reported that Trump’s rallies, the centerpiece of his unconventional and underestimated 2016 campaign, have been a boost for local candidates, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in free media and boosting Republicans in post-rally polls.

By Election Day, Trump will have held 30 rallies since Labor Day, according to the White House. He’s been holding events in competitive House districts and in states with competitive senatorial and gubernatorial races.

Supporters line up early

Indeed, supporters in southwest Florida started to line up for Wednesday’s rally before dawn, and by late morning, about 3,000 people were in line for the event scheduled to start at 7 p.m. on Halloween.

Several attendees wore costumes to mark the occasion, one in an Uncle Sam hat, another dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier, a third as Trump himself.

Adam Botana, the president of Bay Water Exclusive Boat Club & Rentals, said he told his employees they were free to take the day off if they wanted to go to the rally. He said one took him up on the offer.

“It’s a piece of history,” he said, adding he would feel the same way about former President Barack Obama or former President Richard Nixon. “If they want to do that, we have no problem with it.”

Early voters

More than 3.4 million people have already voted in Florida, surpassing the number who voted early or by mail four years ago. And most of those in attendance at the rally claimed to be among them, thrusting their hands into the air when Trump asked who in the crowd had already cast their ballots.

History and recent polls suggest Republicans will lose a significant number of seats in the House. Democrats are facing an uphill battle to gain control of the Senate, with several vulnerable incumbents running in Republican-leaning states.

“I feel very good about the Senate,” Trump told ABC News in an interview before the rally. “And frankly I think we feel pretty good about the House.”
…

The National Rifle Association, long seen as a kingmaker in Republican politics, is taking a lower profile in this year’s high-stakes midterm campaign, a sign of the shifting dynamics of the gun debate as the GOP fights to maintain its grip on Congress.

The NRA has put $11 million into midterm races this year, less than half what it spent four years ago in a campaign that gave Republicans full control of Congress. This year’s totals are also far below the $54 million the group spent in 2016 on both the presidential and congressional races.

The shift comes as spending to support tougher gun control measures has surged. Everytown for Gun Safety, a group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, pledged $30 million for this year’s election, and has continued to put new money into competitive races in the final days. A political action committee formed by Gabby Giffords, the former congresswoman wounded in a shooting, is spending nearly $5 million.

​NRA may be outspent

It’s the first time under current campaign finance laws that the NRA might be outspent by gun control groups, though the organization often ramps up spending late in the campaign. That money won’t show up in federal financial reports until after Election Day.

It all underscores a changing political landscape on guns after a series of election year mass shootings, including the February massacre at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 people dead, and Saturday’s deadly attack at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

“The politics of guns has changed,” said Jim Kessler, the senior vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist think tank. “The groups supporting more gun safety restrictions are smarter than in the past and have more resources, both in terms of people and money, than in the past.”

Support for tightening laws

With polls showing that the majority of Americans now support at least some tightening of gun laws, the issue is no longer taboo in swing districts, particularly the suburban areas that could determine which party controls the House next year. Everytown and Giffords’ group are on the air in competitive districts in Texas, Virginia, Kansas and elsewhere.

After the Pittsburgh shooting, a Bloomberg aide said Everytown bought another $700,000 in advertisements aimed at ousting Rep. Mike Coffman, a vulnerable Republican who represents a suburban Denver district, a significant sum to spend on a single House race in one week.

The group has also spent about $4 million in the Atlanta suburbs to back Democrat and gun control advocate Lucy McBath, whose son was shot and killed in 2012.

Despite the public polling, there are no guarantees that sending more pro-gun control lawmakers to Washington would result in tougher legislation. Modest measures have repeatedly been blocked in Congress, even as Americans have grown more supportive of steps like banning assault weapons and tightening background checks.

Not walking away

Bloomberg, who is weighing a run for president as a Democrat in 2020, promises to keep up the pressure on lawmakers and candidates he’s backing if they end up on Capitol Hill.

“I’ve put an awful lot of my money and an awful lot of my time into this,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m not going to forget it. I’m not going to walk away.”

He continued: “The nice thing about the House, it may be a stupidly designed system but if they don’t do what they said they were going to do, you get another crack at deciding to support them or somebody else two years from now.”

An NRA spokeswoman would not comment on the group’s election spending compared with organizations pushing for stricter gun laws.

Bloomberg, who is spending $120 million on the midterms, has helped pro-gun control groups level a playing field long dominated by the NRA.

The organization was riding high after the 2016 election, with a strong supporter in the White House and Republicans in charge of both the House and Senate.

Tumultuous year for NRA

But 2018 has proved to be a tumultuous year for the NRA, which has been faced with boycotts from parts of corporate America in the wake of mass shootings and an investigation into what federal authorities allege were covert Russian agents seeking to influence the 2016 election to benefit Trump by courting NRA officials and funneling money through the group.

Publicly, the NRA has portrayed itself as being in financial distress because of deep-pocketed liberal opposition to guns and what it calls the mainstream media “spewing toxic lies” about the group. Over the summer, the organization raised its annual dues fees from $40 to $45, the second increase in two years.

NRA watchers dismiss the notion that the organization is in trouble and say it’s more of a ploy to energize its ardent supporters, which in turn could help bring in more donations.

“It’s in the NRA’s interests to exaggerate how much trouble it’s in,” said Robert J. Spitzer, chairman of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland and an expert on guns and the Second Amendment.

Indeed, the group’s political fundraising is up this year compared to the last midterm election. According to data provided by an NRA official, the group’s Political Victory Fund has raised more than $12 million this year compared to nearly $11 million at this same point in the 2014 midterms.

Other ways to sway votes

While the NRA is not pumping the same levels of money into this year’s elections, it still has much at its disposal to try to sway campaigns: its NRATV media arm, social media and an ability to mobilize its millions of members to get them to the polls.

The NRA’s membership rolls and finances are not public, but the organization has said it has about 6 million in its ranks. Those who closely watch the group believe its membership is closer to 4 million.

Both the NRA and groups such as Everytown can also quietly influence elections with money that doesn’t have to be reported in publicly available campaign finance reports.
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