Election Theft 101: Foster Skepticism | The White House Puts New Guardrails on Government Use of AI | • John Eastman Should Lose Law License, Judge Finds, and more

But swing states often split their vote for president and state legislature. Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all voted for President Biden in 2020. But each state also had a state legislature dominated by Republicans. If each of those Republican state legislatures had canceled its state’s elections in 2020 and directly appointed Republican electors instead, Joe Biden would never have become president.

Trump’s Social Media Company Opens New Avenue for Conflicts of Interest  (Sharon LaFraniere, New York Times)
Trump Media & Technology Group — the owner of Truth Social, the site Mr. Trump uses to rally his backers and blast his opponents — could present a new, fairly straightforward route for foreign leaders or special interests to try to influence him. Should he retain his control of the company while in office, the ethical questions that arose from Mr. Trump’s hotels and other properties in his first term as president would only multiply when applied to a publicly traded media company, they said.
“This will be a very easy vehicle for foreign governments that want to curry favor with the president to throw money at him in a way that benefits his financial bottom line,” said Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard University and a top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush.
Corporations and other players wanting to sway Mr. Trump could buy advertising on Truth Social, other experts said. They could try to get on his radar by buying shares in the company. As the nation’s leader whose every utterance is monitored around the world, Mr. Trump would also be in an extraordinary position to drive traffic — and ultimately revenue — by the habitual use of the site.
Ethics experts see few legal obstacles to these scenarios. Presidents are not covered by federal conflict-of-interest law, and efforts to use constitutional checks failed during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Foreign or special interests are not the only concern that arises with presidential control of a media company, said Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush and who later ran for Congress as a Democrat.
If Mr. Trump were re-elected and used Truth Social to communicate in the way that he used Twitter during his first term, Mr. Painter said, “he would be helping himself to profits through United States government traffic” while putting Truth Social’s competitors at an unfair disadvantage.

John Eastman Should Lose Law License, Judge Finds  (Alan Feuer, New York Times)
A judge in California recommended on Wednesday that the lawyer John Eastman be stripped of his law license, finding he had violated rules of professional ethics by persistently lying in his efforts to help former President Donald J. Trump maintain his grip on power after losing the 2020 election.
In a 128-page ruling, the judge, Yvette Roland, said Mr. Eastman had willfully misrepresented facts in lawsuits he helped file challenging the election results and acted dishonestly in promoting a “wild theory” that Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, could unilaterally declare him the victor during a certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“In sum, Eastman exhibited gross negligence by making false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon,” Judge Roland found, adding that he had breached “his ethical duty as an attorney to prioritize honesty and integrity.”

The White House Puts New Guardrails on Government Use of AI  (Amanda Hoover, Wired)
The US government issued new rules Thursday requiring more caution and transparency from federal agencies using artificial intelligence, saying they are needed to protect the public as AI rapidly advances. But the new policy also has provisions to encourage AI innovation in government agencies when the technology can be used for public good.
The US hopes to emerge as an international leader with its new regime for government AI. Vice President Kamala Harris said during a news briefing ahead of the announcement that the administration plans for the policies to “serve as a model for global action.” She said that the US “will continue to call on all nations to follow our lead and put the public interest first when it comes to government use of AI.”
The new policy from the White House Office of Management and Budget will guide AI use across the federal government. It requires more transparency as to how the government uses AI and also calls for more development of the technology within federal agencies. The policy sees the administration trying to strike a balance between mitigating risks from deeper use of AI—the extent of which are not known—and using AI tools to solve existential threats like climate change and disease.