Masks invade political ads

Political campaigns pack as many symbols as they can into 30-second TV ads to drive home candidates’ messages, from waving flags to smiling seniors to bustling small businesses. This year, there's a new one on the list: masks.

President Donald Trump’s reluctance to embrace masks during the coronavirus pandemic has turned them into a political object despite his own administration’s public health advice. But masks are still in heavy rotation in Covid-related TV ads for both parties in suburbs around the country, according to a POLITICO review of more than 400 political ads that aired in September and were collected by Advertising Analytics.

Some ad-makers described intensive research to figure out whether voters would recoil at reminders of the pandemic in TV ads or if they would warm to seeing masks as a safety precaution, testing images and footage with and without masks. But while masks are commonplace for ads in urban or suburban areas — likely a reflection of those places’ experience with the coronavirus — masks are less prominent in ads for Democrats and Republicans alike in rural, more GOP-leaning House districts.

In interviews with more than a dozen media consultants, some noted that mask-wearing can just be a result of logistics like filming in a business or a public space where there’s a mask ordinance. But more often, candidates are looking to send a message by wearing one — or not.

“The amount of mask-wearing in TV ads often aligns with the partisan index of the district and how deeply, or not, the district has dealt with coronavirus,” said Nick Everhart, a Republican ad-maker. “Certainly, in the current political moment, [an ad] with or without a mask … it can send a lot of signals and messages.”

There is a stark party-line division in Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential ads. Three-quarters of Biden campaign ads in the last month, whether they were about the pandemic or not, featured mask-wearing, either by the candidate himself or those appearing in the spot. Many of Biden’s ads have ended with a photograph of the nominee and running mate Kamala Harris sporting masks.

Meanwhile, less than 1-in-3 Trump campaign ads featured a mask in September — and some of those just had images of Biden wearing a mask. The president, who has pushed back on his own Centers for Disease Control director for calling masks as effective as a vaccine at preventing the spread of coronavirus, only appeared in a mask for one second in one TV ad in the last month.

But the strict boundaries of pandemic politics in the presidential race don’t translate down-ballot, with candidates, at times, appearing to use them to get distance from the national party brand in ads that discuss coronavirus.

Former Rep. David Young, a Republican running to retake his Des Moines-based seat, showed footage of him talking outside to a family dealing with pre-existing conditions, all while wearing masks. Genevieve Collins, a Republican running in a Dallas-based House seat, featured both masks and hand sanitizer in her TV ads on the pandemic. Amanda Adkins, a Republican businesswoman running in the Kansas City suburbs, talked about the “invisible killer virus,” flashing images of children in masks.

“Republicans in those suburban districts are really trying to hang on and appeal to those college-educated voters who are skeptical of the GOP, so they’re finding a way to be pro-mask without it being heavy-handed,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant based in California. “This is the ultimate test for figuring out how in touch a candidate is with their district.”

Yet several Democrats running in rural or Trump-leaning seats didn’t use a mask in their ads, choosing other ways to address the pandemic that didn’t require face coverings. Rep. Xochitl Torres-Small (D-N.M.) opted for a direct-to-camera address on her work to help New Mexico families during the pandemic, as did Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who filmed an ad about the pandemic as he drove from Maine to Washington, D.C. J.D. Scholten, vying to represent a stretch of rural Iowa, featured footage of farmers struggling during the pandemic by voicing the narration.

“If there’s a Democrat in a Trump district who is not wearing a mask, there was strategic thought put into that, and if a Republican is wearing one in a blue-leaning seat, there’s strategy in that, too, because ads are the most expensive, well-crafted parts of the campaign,” said John Del Cecato, a Democratic ad-maker.

For Democrats running in one of those Trump-leaning seats, “if you can avoid it, why would you put that in an ad, when you don’t necessarily want to remind people about it?” said one Democratic ad-maker, who is working on several races in rural, Trump-leaning House seats. “A Democratic member or candidate in a Trump district doesn’t want to inject that partisanship that unfortunately comes with mask-wearing into their ads.”

TV ads are often the most expensive thing a political campaign does, and several consultants said they conducted research into the impact of mask-wearing in an ad.

In an ad test in one suburban district, “we showed video footage with a mask and one without a mask, and people proactively brought up that they liked that the candidate was wearing a mask,” said a Democratic ad-maker who studied the research, and in an exurban/rural district, “we used photographs of the candidate in a mask and without a mask and put it to our online focus groups, and the masks did not faze them one bit.”

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still mask-wearing controversies for some candidates.

“I’ve gone straight from one [ad] shoot where the candidate himself was extremely concerned about masks, concerned about protocols for the crew — and then straight to another [ad] shoot where the campaign staff and the candidate were ribbing the [camera] crew for keeping their masks on the entire time, even when we were outside,” said one Republican media consultant. “It shouldn’t be a political symbol, but it is, almost as much of a symbol as a MAGA hat.”

The calculations of what to put in front of the camera are mirrored by what’s changing behind the cameras, where the coronavirus pandemic has upended the entire political industry. Media consultants from both parties described a completely new way of shooting and editing ads that would have been unrecognizable in prior years.

Liability wavers ballooned from one to many pages long. On-set snacks disappeared, replaced by masks and hand sanitizer. One Democrat said he bought a plastic cooler in every city, so they could at least provide cold bottled water during sweaty summer shoots.

Consultants have directed TV ads virtually, Zooming into sets and interviewing subjects from a laptop screen. Many said they mashed several ad shoots into a single day to reduce opportunities for exposure, while others described a scramble to license stock footage of personal protective equipment.

“I’ve become a long-haul trucker,” said Everhart, who is based in Ohio and has driven to ad shoots in Kansas, Georgia and Mississippi to avoid flying.

Meanwhile, the scenes voters have come to expect — crowd shots at a town hall meeting, rope-line interactions with voters, hugging seniors and kissing babies — are nowhere to be found this fall.

Instead, “there’s plenty of awkward socially distant footage, and we’re trying to make that look normal, even though it definitely doesn’t look normal, and we can’t really show the real enthusiasm that’s out there,” said John Lapp, a Democratic media consultant who is working on House and Senate races across the country.

It has even become common to see TV ads prominently feature video conferences rather than rallies. Democrat Hillary Scholten, running for a Michigan House seat, showed her family getting ready for online church, which has made it “a lot harder” to get her sons “in their Sunday best.” Democrat Dan Feehan, running in southern Minnesota, leaned into home-schooling his kids. Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman, mask in hand, said he’s “fighting hard to get life back to normal,” alongside his mom, who he “meets outside to stay safe.”

“In 20 years, people will look back at these ads and say, ‘What in the world were they doing?’” Lapp said. “And then they’ll remember it was 2020.”

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Trump requires food aid boxes to come with a letter from him

The Agriculture Department last week began mandating that millions of boxes of surplus food for needy families include a letter from President Donald Trump claiming credit for the program.

The USDA’s $4 billion Families to Farmers Food Box Program has distributed more than 100 million boxes to those in need since May, with the aim of redirecting meat, dairy and produce that might normally go to restaurants and other food-service businesses. But organizations handing out the aid complain the program is now being used to bolster Trump’s image a month before a high-stakes election – and some even have refused to distribute them.

“In my 30 years of doing this work, I've never seen something this egregious,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks. "These are federally purchased boxes.”

The letter comes in both English and Spanish on White House letterhead and features Trump’s bold signature: “As President, safeguarding the health and well-being of our citizens is one of my highest priorities,” it reads. “As part of our response to coronavirus, I prioritized sending nutritious food from our farmers to families in need throughout America.”

The move is the latest example of Trump using the levers of government and taxpayer dollars for self-promotion as he runs for re-election. In the early months of the crisis, the president enclosed letters with his signature to millions of Americans getting stimulus money stemming from a congressional aid package – and made sure his name was printed on the checks. His health department is now rushing to push out a $300 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign promoting the administration’s coronavirus response.

The administration has denied that these moves are political or improper, despite outcries from Democrats and questions from ethics groups.

“Politics has played zero role in the Farmers to Families food box program,” the Agriculture Department said in an emailed statement. “It is purely about helping farmers and distributors get food to Americans in need during this unprecedented time.”

The administration slowly started including letters from the president in USDA’s food boxes over the past few months. But last week the USDA began requiring the letters to be added to all boxes distributed by companies with government contracts, according to six people familiar with the program.

Fox News first reported in July that letters would be included in some boxes over the summer and credited Ivanka Trump with the idea. In response, Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue complaining that the effort could be a violation of the Hatch Act, the federal law preventing executive branch employees from engaging in political activity. They asked the department to end the practice “immediately.”

The USDA responded by saying the letters don’t violate the Hatch Act and moved ahead anyway. This week, the White House posted a campaign-style video on Twitter touting the food boxes with remarks Trump made in North Carolina in August before a crowd of a few hundred people.

“It's almost like an escalation,” Rep. Marcia Fudge, an Ohio Democrat who led the letter to Perdue, said in an interview. “Before they were optional. Now they are demanding that they go in every box."

"This is supposed to be about helping hungry people,” said Fudge, who chairs a panel overseeing nutrition on the House Agriculture Committee, “It is one of the worst things I've seen in a long time.”

The new mandate has sent food banks and other nonprofits scrambling as they worry distributing the boxes with the letters could be misconstrued as election activity, according to interviews with nearly a dozen nonprofit and industry leaders.

"These guys should be handing out food and instead they're talking to campaign attorneys because of these damn letters,” said Eric Kessler, founder of Arabella Advisors, a philanthropy consulting firm, and a longtime player in Democratic politics."It's a brazen attempt at vote buying targeted at the neediest."

Food banks in several parts of the country said they have consulted lawyers to make sure they aren’t jeopardizing their nonprofit tax status, or violating any election laws.

In Ohio, food bank leaders sought legal counsel after a member of the National Guard who was helping hand out the food boxes raised questions about whether they could be inadvertently violating the Hatch Act.

In a legal memo shared with POLITICO, law firm Reminger determined that the letters do not violate the law because they don’t explicitly mention the election and the letter is not “directed towards the success or failure of a political party, candidate for political office or partisan political group.”

Some food banks have advised the food pantries and nonprofits in their network that they can open the boxes one by one and take out the letter from the president if they want to and have the staff to do so.

“We are a nonpartisan organization,” said Greg Trotter, a spokesman for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. “While the content of the letter is not overtly political, we think it’s inappropriate to include a letter from any political candidate just weeks from an election.”

In Oregon, a major food bank recently decided to stop participating in the program, in part because of the letters. The CEO of the organization, Susannah Morgan, wrote in a statement that “there are real questions as to whether food assistance organizations can ethically distribute such a message with an election looming in mere weeks.”

The Agriculture Department did not respond to questions about why the letters were previously not required, but now are.

In response to POLITICO’s questions, a spokesperson for USDA said Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease official at the National Institutes of Health, supports the letters as a messaging tool.

“In addition to benefiting from fresh produce, dairy and meat products, Americans in need also are receiving essential information about how to protect themselves and others from COVID-19. These measures include avoiding crowds, maintaining physical distance (6 feet), covering your mouth and nose with a cloth face cover when around others, and washing your hands often,” Fauci said, in a statement provided by USDA.

The single-page letter included in the boxes, however, is less specific, telling people to wash their hands, protect the elderly and vulnerable, and stay home if they feel sick. The letter only says to “consider” wearing a face covering in public, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explicitly recommends doing so.

The USDA also shared a statement from Ivanka Trump, who has been a public ambassador for the program.

On the south side of Chicago, in a predominantly Black neighborhood that has been hard hit by Covid-19, the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation has been handing out USDA food boxes every week since mid-May, when the program began. This week was the first time the president’s letters started showing up in the boxes, which are handed out in the parking lot of a Save-A-Lot grocery store that shut down in February, just weeks before coronavirus began wreaking havoc on the economy, said Carlos Nelson, the CEO of the nonprofit.

“It’s really shocking,” Nelson said, noting that the letters put his organization in an uncomfortable position because the group is required to remain apolitical to maintain its nonprofit tax status. “It seems like it’s being politicized.”

On Tuesday, during their weekly distribution event, one long-time volunteer walked off and refused to participate once she realized the packages contained letters from Trump, expressing worry that people may think the boxes were essentially trying to sway votes, Nelson said. Others opened up the boxes and began removing the letters before handing them out to individuals who arrived at the event on foot, though the vast majority were not removed before being handed out.

Some people receiving the boxes pitched the letters out their car windows, Nelson said, leaving them on the ground. "Thankfully we've got a litter abatement team here,” he said.

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Opinion | Americans Increasingly Believe Violence is Justified if the Other Side Wins

At the presidential debate this week, the Republican candidate voiced his concern about political violence—left-wing political violence. And the Democratic candidate likewise voiced concern about political violence—right-wing political violence.

They were both right.

Like a growing number of prominent American leaders and scholars, we are increasingly anxious that this country is headed toward the worst post-election crisis in a century and a half. Our biggest concern is that a disputed presidential election—especially if there are close contests in a few swing states, or if one candidate denounces the legitimacy of the process—could generate violence and bloodshed.

Unfortunately, we’re not being alarmist about the potential for violence; trends in public opinion that we’ve been tracking provide strong grounds for concern. Our research, which we’re reporting here for the first time, shows an upswing in the past few months in the number of Americans—both Democrats and Republicans—who said they think violence would be justified if their side loses the upcoming presidential election.

This growing acceptance of the possibility of violence is a bipartisan movement. Our data shows that the willingness of Democrats and Republicans alike to justify violence as a way to achieve political goals has essentially been rising in lockstep.

All of us have been involved, separately and eventually together, in surveying and researching Americans’ political attitudes and engagement. Late last year, we noticed an uptick in the number of respondents saying they would condone violence by their own political party, and we decided to combine our data sets to get as much information as possible on this worrisome trend. We were also monitoring another question: Would you condone violence if the other party’s candidate wins the presidential election?

While the pool of respondents between our datasets is slightly different, our questions have had the same wording. Here’s what we’ve found:

• Among Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican, 1 in 3 now believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ political goals—a substantial increase over the last three years.

• In September, 44 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats said there would be at least “a little” justification for violence if the other party’s nominee wins the election. Those figures are both up from June, when 35 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats expressed the same sentiment.

• Similarly, 36 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said it is at least “a little” justified for their side “to use violence in advancing political goals”—up from 30 percent of both Republicans and Democrats in June.

• There has been an even larger increase in the share of both Democrats and Republicans who believe there would be either “a lot” or “a great deal” of justification for violence if their party were to lose in November. The share of Republicans seeing substantial justification for violence if their side loses jumped from 15 percent in June to 20 percent in September, while the share of Democrats jumped from 16 percent to 19 percent.

• These numbers are even higher among the most ideological partisans. Of Democrats who identify as “very liberal,” 26 percent said there would be “a great deal” of justification for violence if their candidate loses the presidency compared to 7 percent of those identifying as simply “liberal.” Of Republicans who identify as “very conservative,” 16 percent said they believe there would be “a great deal” of justification for violence if the GOP candidate loses compared to 7 percent of those identifying as simply “conservative.” This means the ideological extremes of each party are two to four times more apt to see violence as justified than their party’s mainstream members.

All together, about 1 in 5 Americans with a strong political affiliation says they are quite willing to endorse violence if the other party wins the presidency. (The surveys by YouGov and the Voter Study Group had margins of error ranging from 1.5 to 3 percentage points. The surveys by Nationscape had margins of error of 2 and 2.1 percentage points.)

How seriously should we take these expressions of violence? Both history and social psychology warn us to take them very seriously. In Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, a rising tide of armed street mobilization and of violent clashes between rival partisans ravaged fragile democratic cultures, bullied and marginalized moderate forces, and gave rising autocrats an excuse to seize emergency powers. Some of us who’ve studied the rise of authoritarians see strong parallels between that period of European history and factors at work in America today.

However, expressing approval of partisan violence does not mean someone is ready to pick up a gun. The steps from attitudes to actions are prohibitive for all but a tiny minority because of the legal, social, and physical risks of acting violently.

But even a shift of 1 percent in these surveys would represent the views of over a million Americans. Furthermore, two of us have found in our research that violent events tend to increase public approval of political violence—potentially creating a vicious cycle even if violence is sparked in only a few spots.

Viewed in this light, the events of this summer are especially worrying. Competing protesters from the right and left have clashed violently in Portland, Ore.; Kenosha, Wis.; and Louisville. Left-wing extremists have repeatedly laid siege to federal buildings in Portland, and on several occasions, armed right-wing protesters entered the State Capitol in Michigan.

Democrats have interpreted Trump’s remarks and tweets as legitimizing or even encouraging violence by his supporters—fears only intensified by the president’s comments during this week’s debate urging the Proud Boys, a misogynistic white supremacist group that has been active in recent street protests, to “stand back and stand by.”

Republicans, for their part, interpreted Joe Biden’s rhetorical question in a recent speech, “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” as a veiled threat of violence should Biden lose.

Moreover, the notable increase in violent views in the past year continues a worrisome trend. Between 2017 and 2019, our YouGov survey data showed a marked 9-point increase in the percentage of partisans who believe it would be at least “a little bit” justified for their own party to use violence to advance their political goals today.

What should leaders do? No lesson in the study of democratic breakdowns rings more clearly than that political leaders play the central role in fanning—or containing—political polarization and extremism. From Germany and Italy in interwar Europe to Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, the rhetoric and tactics of leading politicians shaped the fate of democracies in crisis.

Recent research on the United States reaffirms this timeless truth: Leaders play an essential role in fueling the fire or extinguishing the flames of violence among their followers. Preliminary studies show that messages from Biden or Trump denouncing all violence can reduce mass approval of violence.

Everyone in a position of leadership in a democracy—whether in a neighborhood organization, a municipality, a political party, the Congress or the White House—has an obligation to renounce violence and explicitly dissuade their followers from turning to violent tactics or threats. Further, political leaders have a solemn responsibility to uphold and urge their followers to adhere to the essential norms of democracy, including the principles that the voters should freely decide who shall rule, and all valid votes should be counted toward that decision.

However, we fear we are now headed into such a severe downward spiral of partisan polarization that we cannot rely on the candidates and campaigns to pull us out of it.

In this context, any one of several possible scenarios risks triggering unprecedented post-election violence. Biden could surge from behind on Election Night to win on the strength of mail-in ballots that President Trump has already dismissed as fraud-ridden, prompting Trump’s supporters to feel the election was stolen from him. Should some Republican-controlled legislatures seek to throw out mail-in ballots wholesale and give their states’ Electoral College votes to Trump regardless of the final vote count, Democrats (and others) would be outraged. There could also be intense anger on the left if Trump wins reelection by once again losing the popular vote but winning by narrow margins in states that give him an Electoral College victory. Congress—itself so polarized—could be hard-pressed to ensure a widely legitimate outcome on its own.

The best hope now to tamp down support for this potential political violence is to establish an independent, bipartisan third force—a broad commission of distinguished leaders and democratic elders of both parties and of civil society. Its mission would be to reaffirm and defend our democratic norms, especially the critical principles that every valid vote should be counted and that political violence is never justified in the United States. Congress should immediately appoint such a commission.

We do not pull this alarm lightly. The decisions we make over the next few months are hugely consequential. If we fall into a cycle of violence, the consequences for America’s future as a democracy will be dire.

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At White House’s urging, Republicans launch anti-tech blitz ahead of election

The Trump administration is pressuring Senate Republicans to ratchet up scrutiny of social media companies it sees as biased against conservatives in the run-up to the November election, people familiar with the conversations say. And the effort appears to be paying off.

In recent weeks, the White House has pressed Senate Republican leaders on key committees to hold public hearings on the law that protects Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies from lawsuits over how they treat user posts, three Senate staffers told POLITICO. They requested anonymity to discuss private communications.

And action is following. Senate Commerce Chair Roger Wicker is having his committee vote Thursday on whether to issue subpoenas to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google to testify about how they police content on their platforms. That's after the Mississippi Republican tried and failed last week to push through subpoenas that could have compelled the CEOs to testify with only a few days' notice.

Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), meanwhile, is holding a markup of new legislation on Thursday aimed at addressing allegations of an anti-conservative bias on social media. It’s the fastest any bill to revamp the legal shield has moved from introduction to a markup on Capitol Hill in recent memory.

Both committees are targeting liability protections that have been credited with fueling Silicon Valley's success. The provision — enshrined in a 1996 law known as Section 230 — has allowed online businesses to grow without fear of lawsuits over user posts or their decisions to remove or otherwise moderate users' content.

Both lawmakers have reason to want to get in the White House's good graces. Graham, a prominent Trump ally, is facing the fight of his political life to hold onto his South Carolina seat against Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison. And Wicker will want to maintain a firm hold on his gavel, which gives him jurisdiction over most legislation targeting Section 230.

The congressional actions mark a sudden and dramatic escalation of efforts by Senate Republicans to revamp the legal shield — particularly with a Congress readying for elections and embroiled in negotiations over Covid relief. But Republicans say Section 230 has allowed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative viewpoints with impunity. Tech companies deny any such bias, and the administration itself has noted there's limited academic data to back up the concerns.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a top Trump ally on tech and longtime critic of Section 230, called the recent surge of activity by his colleagues "a sea change." President Donald Trump, he said, has been a driving force in rallying them.

“There’s hardly a conversation I have with the president where this doesn’t come up, where Section 230 does not come up, usually raised by him,” Hawley said in an interview. “It is much on his mind and I think his strong stance on this issue has had a big effect in opening the eyes of some of my Republican colleagues to realize this is a major issue.”

Trump has taken his own steps to weaken Silicon Valley's standing after Twitter began adding fact-check and warning labels to some of his tweets.

The president issued an executive order in May asking his independent agencies to crack down on the liability protections, and has taken an active role in seeking results. He has pulled in agency heads for discussions over how to implement the executive order and he nominated to the Federal Communications Commission a Commerce Department staffer who help craft an administration petition to narrow Section 230 protections.

The onslaught against the liability shield comes ahead of a November election where tech companies are likely to face high-stakes decisions over how to handle posts by Trump seeking to undermine the results of the tally. Facebook, Google and Twitter have all outlined plans to limit political candidates' ability to declare premature victory or cast doubt on the voting process ahead of Nov. 3.

It's not Thursday's sessions alone. Republicans are looking to drum up support for other bills targeting Section 230 on bias. And Hawley last week took to the Senate floor to unsuccessfully request unanimous passage of his own bill targeting Section 230. That bill would give users more leeway to sue online businesses if they feel their posts have been discriminated against.

Although the White House didn't comment on whether the administration requested the GOP lawmakers' efforts, it lauded their actions.

"We support congressional efforts to shed light on Section 230 liability issues and possible abuses by the tech industry," White House spokesperson Judd Deere said. "It’s unfortunate Democrats are attempting to block these efforts."

The president has also privately expressed frustration that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has not taken up any bills targeting Section 230 over the bias charges, said one of the people who spoke anonymously. A McConnell spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment. Trump last month tweeted that McConnell “must fight back and repeal Section 230, immediately,” adding “Stop biased Big Tech before they stop you!”

Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill confirm a free-flowing dialogue with the administration on the matter. “We have talked to the White House, we have talked to the DOJ,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in an interview about a separate bill targeting the liability shield that she introduced with Wicker and Graham. She did not elaborate on the conversations.

NetChoice vice president Carl Szabo, whose tech trade group represents industry giants including Facebook, Google and Amazon, called the deluge of hearings, bills and speeches “two to three weeks of hell for tech.”

“It’s likely to continue through the election, and a lot of it is to keep tech on its back feet when it comes to content moderation,” Szabo said.

The offensive is meeting stiff resistance from congressional Democrats, who reject the moves as politically-driven attempts to intimidate social media companies into dialing back their policing of misleading and incendiary posts by the president and his allies.

“It’s a really important time, leading into this election,” Karen Kornbluh, who directs the digital innovation and democracy initiative at the German Marshall Fund and served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said in an interview. “Conspiracy theories are spreading.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on Wicker’s panel, said she resisted his initial subpoena request over fears that such a move would chill the companies’ efforts to tackle “lies, harassment and intimidation” ahead of the election.

“I am not interested in using our subpoena power to try to play or game the refs days before an election, which is clearly what Republicans are doing,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said this week. “The timing shows that these subpoenas are clearly calculated to chill efforts to get misinformation or falsehoods from abroad or domestic groups [removed].”

Commerce Democrats could boycott the subpoena vote in protest, an action Blumenthal declined to rule out. He also said the move could "set back" bipartisan progress on Capitol Hill to reform Section 230. Blumenthal and Graham for nearly a year have negotiated a separate bill targeting Section 230 and sexually exploitative material online.

Graham spokesperson Taylor Reidy said the senator "has discussed this issue [of Section 230 reform] for quite some time," long prior to Thursday's markup.

Democrats have launched their own pressure campaigns over their concerns about social media ahead of the election, but it's taken a more limited form, such as through letters to top companies. The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has expressed anxiety about Trump’s claims and an explosion of misinformation going unchecked in the critical days as voters cast their ballots. His campaign manager pledged to Facebook in letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week that they would be “calling out those failures” in the coming days.

A trio of congressional Democrats in a separate missive last week accused Facebook of “failing to protect consumers from misinformation by inconsistently enforcing its own policies for its own financial and political benefit.”

The Democrats argue Republicans have taken their own campaign a step too far. "These are not what our oversight powers are supposed to be used to do," Blumenthal said.

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‘On the precipice’: How the cratering economy became a second public health crisis

The coronavirus pandemic is taking a toll on just about every aspect of basic well-being in America: Health. Housing. Food. School. Work.

Cities and states have drained their budgets and local governments are falling behind on the services they’re responsible by law to fund — even as Congress keeps teasing out a preelection political standoff and the long-term toll of the crisis deepens.

After months of standoff, Washington is making a last-ditch effort to reach a bipartisan deal for another round of coronavirus aid. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resumed talks with Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin this week, though the two sides are still hundreds of billions of dollars apart.

Regardless, recovery could take years, with the nation's most vulnerable enduring the worst of it. And their ranks will only continue to swell as the pandemic reshapes society, forcing more Americans out of their jobs and homes even as safety-net funding dies up.

Kids in poor households have already lost their link to schooling and free meals amid closures. More and more families are relying on charity for food — even as donations decline and local services get cut. And millions of people who’ve lived paycheck to paycheck are facing a mountain of rental debt that will subsume their other needs.

The numbers — beyond the 200,000 dead from the virus — dwarf any economic crisis since the Great Depression. More than 14 million households or as many as 34 million people may be unable to make rent as of mid-September, according to analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, as the tab owed to landlords nationwide could soon top $17 billion. Nearly 30 million people are getting unemployment benefits. One of every six adults and at least 16 percent of children can’t reliably get food.

Absent any new emergency relief fund from Congress, local governments say they’re facing a $650 billion budget hole by 2022 — with social and public services likely to bear much of the brunt. Nearly 70 percent have already had to delay or cut services, including housing, food assistance and public safety, the National Association of Counties reports. And state unemployment funds began running out months ago.

Meanwhile, nonprofits and charities, typically relied on to help support state and local services, have already seen some government contracts frozen. Individual donations have dramatically dropped.

The plunge into crisis is most visible in what until recently had been some of the fastest growing, thriving cities in the country, like Las Vegas and Houston. The gaps in meeting basic needs, which is likely to persist for months in the best-case scenarios, have already intensified America’s chronic public health woes.

Boom to bust in Vegas

Las Vegas, largely dependent on hospitality and the travel industry, was booming at the start of the year, but ground to a halt during the shutdowns and is still reeling from the economic fallout. City officials say it will take years to recover.

“People who look like they otherwise wouldn’t need help are starting to show up,” said Regis Whaley, director of Business Support for Three Square Food Bank, which serves southern Nevada including Vegas. As the economic crash reaches higher up on the economic ladder, the cars at the local drive-through food banks are “getting nicer and nicer."

Meanwhile, a housing crisis is brewing. At the end of July, most low-income people in the state believed they probably or absolutely could not afford their rent, compared to a month earlier when most were still confident they could make the month’s rent, according to the consulting firm Stout’s analysis of Census survey data.

By the end of the summer, Nevadans in the $50,000 to $100,000 earnings bracket were also more likely to say they couldn’t either. In September, an estimated 140,000 to 180,000 households in the state weren’t able to make rent, according to new analysis of census data from the consulting firm Stout, which estimates that by January the debt to Nevada landlords will top $337 million.

Housing advocates have spent months sounding the alarm about the problem, which has persisted despite two different federal freezes on evictions that, to many in Washington, appeared to settle — or at least punt — any big crisis.

Congress in the CARES Act rescue package from March first put a 120-day moratorium on evictions, lasting through most of July. Yet as John Pollock of the Public Justice Center noted, it applied only to about one-quarter of the nation’s tenants. Meanwhile, he added, people often didn’t know whether the protections applied to them.

So evictions continued, according to a National Housing Law Project survey of 100 legal aid and civil rights lawyers in 38 states. At the end of June, some 91 percent of those attorneys said they were seeing illegal evictions. More than half said they witnessed tenants getting illegally locked out of their homes, while 18 percent said landlords were using intimidation or other eviction threats.

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention triggered another eviction freeze. But there’s a checklist tenants must meet; protection is not automatic.

Congress hasn’t invested any more money into rental assistance — nor has Senate Republican leadership warmed to the idea. Meanwhile, more than a third of local programs assisting with rent have closed or paused operations, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

By the end of January, when the CDC’s freeze will expire, Nevadans will likely owe at least $337 million, according to new analysis released by the National Council of State Housing Agencies. These debts will also hurt landlords who depend on rentals for income, as well as state and local budgets — on top of the stress on the renters themselves.

“Even if they’re able to stay in their home, they’re cutting back on paying for urgently needed health care services, or food for their kids,” said Stockton Williams, the Council’s executive director.

Old problems, new urgency

Houston, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, is a sprawling metropolis that for the past three years was thriving. But the fall in oil prices had already bruised its economy and job market by the time Covid-19 arrived. Now the city and Harris County are chewing through tens of millions of dollars of aid money simply to stave off mass homelessness.

“We’re on the precipice of a massive, massive challenge with housing,” said David Haines, chief of strategy and innovation for BakerRipley, a community development organization that’s been coordinating housing and food relief efforts in Houston.

From interviews with some 2,400 Houston residents at the start of the pandemic, the organization found that about half were worried about their jobs, 45 percent hadn’t received the $1,200 stimulus check from the federal government, and two-thirds of the kids hadn’t been able to do the online learning that was supposed to substitute for in-person schooling. By August BakerRipley had delivered more than a million tons of food through biweekly food fairs — and, Haines said, “the lines are always there.”

Texas froze eviction orders in March, but that moratorium lapsed in late May. That month, the city of Houston had rallied to stave off a massive crisis, directing Cares Act funds into a $15 million first-come, first-served pot of money for rent. It was all gone within 90 minutes and was enough for about 12,000 households.

In August, Harris County put together a separate rental assistance effort of about $40 million. And the city of Houston by the end of July provided another $20 million for rent help, with $5 million coming from private donors. Catholic Charities of Houston averages about 100 requests for rental help per day.

In early September in the wake of evictions of people who couldn't meet the CDC's criteria, a Harris County constable started a GoFundMe page to help those who had lost their homes. So far it's raised nearly $250,000.

This has all happened before the long-term unemployment picture has even settled.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo stressed these troubles aren’t anything new to Houston, they're simply more intense and widespread in the cratering economy.

“If anything, [the crisis is] exposing the problems that existed, and we’re fighting so that the problems don’t get deeper because of the pandemic — and to use it as leverage to tackle these issues more aggressively,” she said.

Judge Jeremy Brown, who presides over eviction cases in the south side of Houston where he grew up, agreed. Over half of Houston’s Black residents were already spending from 30 percent to more than 50 percent of their income on rent, according to the Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. And, he noted, the ongoing segregation of Black and brown communities have exacerbated the toll.

“Like when we were in the Great Depression, there have to be system changes so we don’t find ourselves in this predicament again,” he said.

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