Inside the far-right plan to use civil rights law to disrupt the 2024 election

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Sarah D. Wire and Mackenzie Mays | Los Angeles Times (TNS)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — At a diner just off the freeway north of Sacramento, a mostly white crowd listened intently as it learned how to “save America” by leaning on the same laws that enshrined the rights of Black voters 60 years ago.

Over mugs of coffee and plates of pot roast smothered in gravy, attendees in MAGA and tea party gear took notes about the landmark Voting Rights Act and studied the U.S. Constitution. They peppered self-proclaimed “election integrity” activist Marly Hornik with questions about how to become skilled citizen observers monitoring California poll workers.

The nearly 90 people gathered in the diner in February were there to understand how they can do their part in a plan to sue California to block certification of the 2024 election results unless the state can prove that ballots were cast only by people eligible to vote.

If any votes are found to be ineligible, Hornik explained, then all voters are being disenfranchised — just like those decades ago who couldn’t vote because of their race.

“If we think our right of suffrage … has been denied or diluted, we have to stop that immediately. We have to stop it right in its tracks,” said Hornik, co-founder of a group called United Sovereign Americans, which is led by a man who helped push former President Donald Trump’s baseless challenges to Joe Biden’s election in 2020.

The two-hour meeting at the Northern California diner — one of several similar presentations that have taken place across the country in recent months — is part of the group’s plan to file lawsuits in multiple states alleging voters’ civil rights are violated by errors on the voter rolls. The goal is to prevent states from certifying federal elections in 2024 until substantial changes are made to election processes.

What United Sovereign Americans has planned is a legal long shot. But election experts worry that if even one sympathetic judge rules in their favor, it could sow doubts about the integrity of a presidential rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump.

“Sometimes the whole point is to whip up enough smoke that it seems like a fire,” said Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general who specializes in voting rights.

The group’s legal arguments rely on faulty interpretations of federal election law and are likely to fail in court, according to Levitt and other experts who believe the group’s evidence of voter registration fraud is overstated and inaccurate.

United Sovereign Americans is part of a cottage industry of far-right election deniers that has sown disinformation since Trump lost his reelection bid. The group aims to scrutinize elections with a legal strategy that can “throw massive amounts of sand in their gears,” Hornik said during a February presentation in Orange County.

Its first lawsuit in the multi-state plan was filed against Maryland election officials on March 6, alleging that the state’s voting policies don’t comply with federal laws requiring accurate voter roles and thus violate the plaintiffs’ civil rights. The suit asks the court to keep the State Board of Elections from certifying any election until their claims of voter roll irregularities and other election law violations have been resolved, an action that could potentially derail Maryland’s May 14 primary. On April 22, Maryland asked the judge hearing the case to dismiss the lawsuit or, at a minimum, deny the request for the restraining order.

Similar lawsuits are expected in coming weeks in California, Ohio, Illinois, Texas and several other states, Hornik said in an interview. Once they have built a legal fund for the suits, her group plans to file in multiple federal jurisdictions in hopes that judges will rule differently in different areas of the country, causing the Supreme Court to step in and settle the issue ahead of election day, she said.

Marly Hornik, co-founder of United Sovereign Americans, speaks at a Sacramento diner in February 2024. (Mackenzie Mays/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

An ‘ecosystem of grift’

Hornik said she lives in rural upstate New York with her “three home-birthed children” and a small herd of dairy goats. The self-described “home school mom” has long gray hair and the air of a patient teacher as she fields questions and flips through PowerPoint slides explaining her plan to disrupt America’s elections.

She drew laughs from the crowd in Sacramento as she cracked jokes about COVID protocols drawing people into “a medical experiment.”

Hornik became involved in an online community questioning election results while stuck at home during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, then went on to create a group called New York Citizens Audit in 2021. Its members spread conspiracy theories about the results of the 2020 and 2022 elections at events across the state.

In September, the New York attorney general issued a cease-and-desist letter ordering Hornik to stop “voter deception and intimidation efforts,” describing complaints that volunteers with her group had “confronted voters across the state at their homes, falsely claimed to be Board of Elections officials and falsely accused voters of committing felony voter fraud.”

Hornik said at the time that the group was not knocking on doors.

She expanded her efforts after teaming up with Harry Haury, whom she met at a 2022 conference hosted by the group that funded the debunked pro-Trump propaganda film “2000 Mules,” which is based on lies about the 2020 election.

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Haury, a St. Louis native with deep ties to the “Stop the Steal” movement, approached Hornik about nationalizing the work of New York Citizens Audit. Haury had been part of a little-known team of self-proclaimed cybersecurity experts who helped search for evidence of fraud in the 2020 election for some of Trump’s closest allies in the weeks after Trump lost. Haury’s background as a software engineer has largely been focused on energy technology.

Together, they created United Sovereign Americans and began recruiting activists in at least 20 states to obtain voter registration rolls and analyze the data for potential errors — such as a person registered at multiple addresses or dead people with active registrations.

Hornik said they have completed examinations of voter rolls in Ohio, Illinois, New York and Texas, and they are finishing that work in California. Florida, Missouri and North Carolina are close behind.

In California, they are working with Election Integrity Project California, a nearly 15-year-old group that has been sending election observers to the polls since 2012. Linda Paine, a former Santa Clarita tea party activist now living in Arizona who leads the group, hosted Hornik for a three-day speaking tour in February with stops in Fresno, Shasta and Ventura counties.

A federal lawsuit that Election Integrity Project California filed to challenge the state’s election laws and procedures was dismissed, but the group has appealed.

The group has trained hundreds of poll watchers to observe whether local officials are following proper election procedures, including during the attempted recall of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021.

Paine did not respond to requests for an interview.

David Becker, who leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a group focused on restoring trust in the nation’s election system, described the work of Paine and Hornik as “an effort to dismantle election integrity under the auspices of election integrity” amid an “ecosystem of grift.”

“The grifters have evolved,” Becker said. “They used to just say, ‘There’s so many dead and illegal voters on the list.’ And then they started coming up with a really specific number … as if there was some analysis that went into that.”

The problem, he said, is that voter registration rolls obtained by these groups are a snapshot of a system that constantly changes as people move or die. It can’t be compared to a static event like an election result: “It is not possible to maintain a voter list that is accurate at every single second of every single day.”

As they’ve crisscrossed the country spreading misinformation about election procedures, Hornik and Haury have asked for donations at public events and on far-right media, saying they need millions of dollars for their lawsuits. Their website allows donors to pick which state effort receives funds, with up to half going to the national group. In Shasta County in February, Hornik urged attendees to think about what they can do to help save America in 2024.

“I want to ask you to really look inside yourself and ask yourself what are you called to do to help this mission?” she said, according to a recording of the event posted online.

“Are you called to participate? Are you called to come and work on the resolutions? Are you called to work on the legal briefings? Are you called to write me a $10,000 check today? Because we need money to get this done.”

Observers from the Election Integrity Project watch ballots being processed in Orange County during California’s 2021 gubernatorial recall election. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

The civil rights claim

At the diner in Sacramento, Hornik told the crowd that her plan to sue states for alleged civil rights violations should be easier than challenging results based on election laws.

“We believe that this very simple approach can advance rapidly,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you weren’t allowed to vote or if your vote was drowned and suffocated by invalid ballots, either way, you didn’t really get to vote.”

Hornik argues that people’s constitutional right to choose their elected representatives is violated when the power of lawful votes is diminished by votes cast illegally.

But the entire plan is based on a count of alleged errors in the voter rolls conducted by volunteers who lack expertise in the election system and election law. Hornik’s allies at Election Integrity Project California claim to have counted 257,894 people who voted in the state’s 2022 election despite potentially being ineligible to cast ballots. But they did not explain their criteria for identifying alleged discrepancies in the voter rolls, raising serious questions about their count.

The volunteer analysts’ work is reminiscent of past efforts by “armchair detectives” to examine voter rolls, said Levitt, the former deputy assistant attorney general. Their arguments claiming fraud are also based on fundamental misunderstandings of what is allowed under federal voting laws, he said.

“These are people sitting at home who don’t actually understand all that much about how the election structure works who are trying to impose their will on how the process is supposed to work on the government,” he said.

And their legal argument is based on a “really troubling” interpretation of civil rights law, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of voting rights for the Brennan Center for Justice.

“The idea that somehow the votes of ineligible voters is drowning out the votes of eligible voters is not at all based on reality,” he said.

The concept of “vote dilution” stems from a provision of the Voting Rights Act that is meant to give people of color equal rights to elect the candidates of their choice. It typically comes up in disputes over drawing political boundaries where the preferences of a minority group could be diluted by a white majority that votes as a bloc.

“The notion that this puts them in a similar situation to people who are actually being disenfranchised is just not a fair or reasonable analogy,” Morales-Doyle said.

Hornik admits that her group does not expect to win a lawsuit against California. She said United Sovereign America intends to file lawsuits in least 11 states across nine federal court circuits. Failing in some and winning in others is part of the strategy to get to the Supreme Court, Hornik said.

“It doesn’t matter that we are going to get turned down in New York. It doesn’t matter that we get turned down potentially in California,” Hornik said. “It matters that we get a favorable ruling in Tennessee and Missouri. It matters that we get a favorable ruling in Texas so that there is a diversity of opinion and ultimately that also means that there is a possibility that the matter is settled for the entire country.”

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Genetics studies have a diversity problem that researchers struggle to fix

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Lauren Sausser | KFF Health News (TNS)

CHARLESTON, S.C. — When he recently walked into the dental clinic at the Medical University of South Carolina donning a bright-blue pullover with “In Our DNA SC” embroidered prominently on the front, Lee Moultrie said, two Black women stopped him to ask questions.

“It’s a walking billboard,” said Moultrie, a health care advocate who serves on the community advisory board for In Our DNA SC, a study underway at the university that aims to enroll 100,000 South Carolinians — including a representative percentage of Black people — in genetics research. The goal is to better understand how genes affect health risks such as cancer and heart disease.

Moultrie, who is Black and has participated in the research project himself, used the opportunity at the dental clinic to encourage the women to sign up and contribute their DNA. He keeps brochures about the study in his car and at the barbershop he visits weekly for this reason. It’s one way he wants to help solve a problem that has plagued the field of genetics research for decades: The data is based mostly on DNA from white people.

Project leaders in Charleston told KFF Health News in 2022 that they hoped to enroll participants who reflect the demographic diversity of South Carolina, where just under 27% of residents identify as Black or African American. To date, though, they’ve failed to hit that mark. Only about 12% of the project’s participants who provided sociodemographic data identify as Black, while an additional 5% have identified as belonging to another racial minority group.

“We’d like to be a lot more diverse,” acknowledged Daniel Judge, principal investigator for the study and a cardiovascular genetics specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Lack of diversity in genetics research has real health care implications. Since the completion more than 20 years ago of the Human Genome Project, which mapped most human genes for the first time, close to 90% of genomics studies have been conducted using DNA from participants of European descent, research shows. And while human beings of all races and ancestries are more than 99% genetically identical, even small differences in genes can spell big differences in health outcomes.

“Precision medicine” is a term used to describe how genetics can improve the way diseases are diagnosed and treated by considering a person’s DNA, environment, and lifestyle. But if this emerging field of health care is based on research involving mostly white people, “it could lead to mistakes, unknowingly,” said Misa Graff, an associate professor in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina and a genetics researcher.

In fact, that’s already happening. In 2016, for example, research found that some Black patients had been misdiagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition because they’d tested positive for a genetic variant thought to be harmful. That variant is much more common among Black Americans than white Americans, the research found, and is considered likely harmless among Black people. Misclassifications can be avoided if “even modest numbers of people from diverse populations are included in sequence databases,” the authors wrote.

The genetics research project in Charleston requires participants to complete an online consent form and submit a saliva sample, either in person at a designated lab or collection event or by mail. They are not paid to participate, but they do receive a report outlining their DNA results. Those who test positive for a genetic marker linked to cancer or high cholesterol are offered a virtual appointment with a genetics counselor free of charge.

Some research projects require more time from their volunteers, which can skew the pool of participants, Graff said, because not everyone has the luxury of free time. “We need to be even more creative in how we obtain people to help contribute to studies,” she said.

Moultrie said he recently asked project leaders to reach out to African American media outlets throughout the Palmetto State to explain how the genetics research project works and to encourage Black people to participate. He also suggested that when researchers talk to Black community leaders, such as church pastors, they ought to persuade those leaders to enroll in the study instead of simply passing the message along to their congregations.

“We have new ideas. We have ways we can do this,” Moultrie said. “We’ll get there.”

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Other ongoing efforts are already improving diversity in genetics research. At the National Institutes of Health, a program called “All of Us” aims to analyze the DNA of more than 1 million people across the country to build a diverse health database. So far, that program has enrolled more than 790,000 participants. Of these, more than 560,000 have provided DNA samples and about 45% identify as being part of a racial or ethnic minority group.

“Diversity is so important,” said Karriem Watson, chief engagement officer for the All of Us research program. “When you think about groups that carry the greatest burden of disease, we know that those groups are often from minoritized populations.”

Diverse participation in All of Us hasn’t come about by accident. NIH researchers strategically partnered with community health centers, faith-based groups, and Black fraternities and sororities to recruit people who have been historically underrepresented in biomedical research.

In South Carolina, for example, the NIH works with Cooperative Health, a network of federally qualified health centers near the state capital that serve many patients who are uninsured and Black, to recruit patients for All of Us. Eric Schlueter, chief medical officer of Cooperative Health, said the partnership works because their patients trust them.

“We have a strong history of being integrated into the community. Many of our employees grew up and still live in the same communities that we serve,” Schlueter said. “That is what is part of our secret sauce.”

So far, Cooperative Health has enrolled almost 3,000 people in the research program, about 70% of whom are Black.

“Our patients are just like other patients,” Schlueter said. “They want to be able to provide an opportunity for their children and their children’s children to have better health, and they realize this is an opportunity to do that.”

Theoretically, researchers at the NIH and the Medical University of South Carolina may be trying to recruit some of the same people for their separate genetics studies, although nothing would prevent a patient from participating in both efforts.

The researchers in Charleston acknowledge they still have work to do. To date, In Our DNA SC has recruited about half of the 100,000 people it hopes for, and of those, about three-quarters have submitted DNA samples.

Caitlin Allen, a program investigator and a public health researcher at the medical university, acknowledged that some of the program’s tactics haven’t succeeded in recruiting many Black participants.

For example, some patients scheduled to see providers at the Medical University of South Carolina receive an electronic message through their patient portal before an appointment, which includes information about participating in the research project. But studies show that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to engage with their electronic health records than white patients, Allen said.

“We see low uptake” with that strategy, she said, because many of the people researchers are trying to engage likely aren’t receiving the message.

The study involves four research coordinators trained to take DNA samples, but there’s a limit to how many people they can talk to face-to-face. “We’re not necessarily able to go into every single room,” Allen said.

That said, in-person community events seem to work well for enrolling diverse participants. In March, In Our DNA SC research coordinators collected more than 30 DNA samples at a bicentennial event in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where more than 60% of residents identify as Black. Between the first and second year of the research project, Allen said, In Our DNA SC doubled the number of these community events that research coordinators attended.

“I would love to see it ramp up even more,” she said.

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

5 ways to stay informed about aging, ageism and being healthy

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Hello, dear readers. I am back after taking a brief sabbatical from my column, a first in 22 years. Several weeks ago, my column featured five areas that highlighted the subject of aging as reflected in digital and print media, podcasts, webinars, research reports and more.  

Here are five more areas that indicate the pervasiveness and relevance of the subject. It’s a bird’s eye overview from just one person’s perspective and is not based on formal analytics. 

Public policy: One example is the Congressional bill entitled Protecting Older Workers Against Age Discrimination Act (POWADA) of 2023. With bipartisan support, this bill is in response to a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that made it more difficult to prove claims of illegal biases under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Since 2009, older workers must prove that age is the deciding factor in the employment decision, rather than just one of the factors. This is a higher burden of proof than needed for other types of job discrimination claims. This bill helps level the playing field for older workers and restores their ability to fight back against age discrimination in the workplace,” wrote Bill Sweeney, AARP senior vice president for government affairs.

Older consumers: In 2022, the 65-and-older demographic accounted for 22 percent of spending in the U.S. economy. This is the highest market share since records began in 1972. This increase has been attributed to older consumers’ health, wealth and perhaps the psychological impact of the pandemic. At the same time, this demographic is considered an underserved market. According to the Boston Consulting Group, mature consumers often are ignored by brand marketing because they are seen as sensitive and reliant on brick-and-mortar stores for their purchases. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketers fail to recognize their role as trendsetters” … notes the consulting group. Furthermore, older adults agree and feel they are being ignored because of age stereotypes, according to research by Age of Majority

Employment: In 2023, roughly 11 million older adults were working, which is nearly quadruple in size since the mid-1980s according to a Pew study. The fastest-growing age group are workers age 75 and older. Add to that changes in the Social Security System which raised the age at which workers can receive their full retirement benefits from age 65 to 67. Although illegal, age discrimination continues in the workplace. AARP reports that 78 percent of older workers say they have seen or experienced age discrimination in the work environment. That’s the highest level since AARP began tracking this issue in 2003.

Dementia: Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common form of dementia among older adults affecting nearly 7 million. It has no agreed-upon cause or cure and is among the most feared of age-related conditions. Just over 10 percent of those age 65 and older have Alzheimer’s Disease and almost two-thirds are women. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, “By 2050, the number is projected to grow to 12.7 million, barring the development of medical breakthroughs to prevent or cure the disease.” It’s the seventh leading cause of death

Intergenerational relationships: “What we’re missing out on when we don’t have intergenerational relationships, personally and collectively” is a headline from the Los Angeles Times (April 11. 2023). It has been acknowledged that age segregation is a century-long trend in retirement communities, nursing homes and classrooms with same-age children. Marc Freedman, co-executive director of CoGenerate, an organization creating a more age-integrated culture, is quoted as saying that such a culture is “vital to solving major social problems.” For that to happen, he notes we need proximity and purpose – to see each other repeatedly and regularly with some common interests and goals. Closer intergenerational relationships is one way to prevent and eradicate ageism. 

Getting older presents challenges and extraordinary opportunities. We are slowly witnessing strategies to match lifespan with health span; for products, services and living conditions to enhance independence, security and dignity and for public policies to guarantee older adults the same rights as any other age group. We are seeing research studies focusing on the prevention and hopefully a cure of Alzheimer’s Disease and programs to enhance intergenerational connections. 

We all are stakeholders. So let us all embrace aging by staying well, keeping informed, and staying connected to loved ones and our communities. And of course, give back in some way. Know every act of kindness counts.

Helen Dennis is a nationally recognized leader on issues of aging and the new retirement with academic, corporate and nonprofit experience. Contact Helen with your questions and comments at Helendenn@gmail.com. Visit Helen at HelenMdennis.com and follow her on facebook.com/SuccessfulAgingCommunity

7 surprising facts about credit cards

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By Melissa Lambarena | NerdWallet

Using a credit card to make purchases is straightforward, but understanding the ins and outs of how exactly they work can be more complicated.

On the back end, credit card issuers can take certain liberties that impact your cards’ features. If you dig into the fine print, you’ll find that card issuers generally mention they can make certain account decisions at their discretion. There are also unwritten liberties issuers can take, potentially in your favor. For instance, an issuer may be cooperative when you request lower interest rates, a higher credit limit or a switch to a different card entirely.

The more you understand your credit cards, the better you can navigate them.

Here are a few facts about credit cards that are good to know.

1. Some credit card terms can change with little if any warning

You may become accustomed to certain perks, rewards, fees or even interest rates over time, but those features can change — some more quickly than others. You’ll often find language supporting this in a card’s terms and conditions.

For significant changes — like increases to interest rates, fees and the minimum amount due — the card issuer generally must give notice 45 days in advance, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s website. But benefits or rewards aren’t considered “significant,” so changes to those can come at any time. (Many issuers will still send an email or written notification as a courtesy to cardholders.)

Variable interest rates change at a quicker pace than other features, as has been the case since the Federal Reserve began hiking interest rates to battle inflation.

“Folks didn’t realize that the rise in the federal interest rate applies to their credit card also,” says Martin Lynch, director of education at Cambridge Credit Counseling, a nonprofit credit counseling agency. “Variable rate cards incorporate those hikes usually within a month or two, so you did see some people experiencing some sticker shock when the minimum payments went up.”

2. Issuers can close an account or cut your credit limit at any time

Even if you’re managing a credit card responsibly, an issuer can still legally close your account if it wants to, according to the CFPB website.

Credit card issuers can also increase or decrease your credit limit at any time.

The issuer must provide an “adverse action notice” when it makes these kinds of unfavorable decisions, the website notes. But they can still catch you off guard.

3. Your creditor may be willing to bend on interest rates

For longtime customers with solid track records, an issuer might be willing to negotiate a lower interest rate. Alternately, a hardship plan (if available) can temporarily lower interest rates if the hardship is because of qualifying circumstances beyond your control.

If you’re having trouble juggling debt, credit card issuers may also be willing to work with you through a nonprofit credit counseling agency’s debt management plan, which can consolidate those debts into one fixed monthly payment if you qualify.

“Our average interest rate right now is about 8%, among all creditors,” Lynch says. “Some are higher, some are lower.”

For comparison, the average rate for credit cards that assessed interest in the last quarter of 2023 was 22.75%, according to Fed data.

4. You might not qualify for a sign-up bonus

Many credit cards offer an upfront pile of cash back, points or miles as an incentive for new cardholders who can meet a specific spending requirement. But if you’ve recently applied for a credit card with the same issuer — even if it’s been more than a year — you might not qualify for the advertised bonus.

As you’re applying for a credit card, it’s important to read the terms carefully to understand whether you’re eligible for such a welcome offer.

5. You can lose a 0% APR

If you have good or excellent credit (credit scores of 690 or higher), you might qualify for a credit card with a 0% introductory APR on purchases, balance transfers or both. But that promotional window may not be guaranteed.

If you pay late, for instance, the issuer could cancel the 0% APR offer and start charging the card’s ongoing variable interest rate instead. Depending on the card, a much higher penalty APR can also apply after missing a payment.

To avoid missing payments, set a reminder or establish an automatic payment schedule.

6. You might be able to upgrade or downgrade your credit card

If a credit card is no longer as valuable to you as it once was, contact the issuer to see whether it’s possible to upgrade or downgrade your credit card to a different option. This is also known as a “product change,” and it may allow you to retain your account number and account history while switching to a card that better suits your needs now.

You might consider downgrading to a different option to avoid an annual fee, for example. An upgrade might get you higher rewards or better perks.

7. The value of your rewards may vary

It’s not really an issue for cash-back credit cards, but if you have a co-branded store card or travel card, be aware that the points or miles that you’re earning may be less valuable for some redemptions than for others.

For example, your miles may be worth a penny or more each when redeemed for travel, but a good bit less than that when you redeem for options like cash back, statement credit or gift cards.

Knowing the true value of your rewards can help you maximize them. You can often get an idea of that value either by logging into your card account and exploring redemption options or by revisiting the card’s terms and conditions.

 

Melissa Lambarena writes for NerdWallet. Email: mlambarena@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @LissaLambarena.