GEORGE SOROS

Republicans blasting a hush-money probe against former President Donald Trump as politically motivated are blaming a frequent target: George Soros.

Election officials from states enrolled in a bipartisan effort to ensure accurate voter lists decided Friday against making rule changes that had been pushed by Republicans and fueled by conspiracy theories, prompting more defections by GOP-leaning states.

Election officials in Florida, Missouri and West Virginia say they are withdrawing from a bipartisan, multistate effort aimed at ensuring the accuracy of voter rolls that has found itself in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories fueled by Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election.

A bipartisan effort among states to combat voter fraud has found itself in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories fueled by Donald Trump’s false claim about the 2020 presidential election and now faces an uncertain future.

Wednesday was a day for sorting, sifting and framing of an expensive, exhaustive and highly negative midterm election campaign.

Republicans who are running to be secretary of state in Wisconsin and Minnesota in primaries Tuesday are repeating Donald Trump’s false claims about the last presidential election and they've suggested they want more authority over how elections are run, especially in Democratic-leaning counties.

The resignation of a county elections clerk in a rural county in Nevada has opened a window into the long-term consequences of election conspiracy theories.

Europe’s highest court says Turkey has failed to comply with its ruling that a prominent Turkish philanthropist be immediately released from jail.

Big political donations this year in races for local district attorney's offices show how national groups are seeking to influence those contests in at least a handful of states.

Democratic Party fundraisers are backing a $60 million purchase of Spanish-language radio stations in ten U.S. cities.

Billionaire investor turned philanthropist George Soros has blamed new technology for helping repressive regimes like Russia and China exert greater control.

Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is building his campaign around Donald Trump and veering to the right as he tries to unseat Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in a May 24 GOP primary.

A Turkish court has sentenced prominent Turkish civil rights activist and philanthropist Osman Kavala to life in prison without parole.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, hired a Republican consulting firm called Targeted Victory to “orchestrate a nationwide campaign” against TikTok, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Through a decades-long career in conservative politics, Virginia Thomas has repeatedly maintained that her political activity represented no conflict of interest with the work of her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The humanitarian needs of more than 10 million displaced Ukrainians have quickly become staggering.

A planned $5 billion electric vehicle plant that has been billed as the largest economic development project in Georgia’s history is drawing opposition from an unusual source: former Republican U.S. senator David Perdue.

The Arizona Senate has censured Republican Wendy Rogers, whose embrace of white nationalism and calls for violence drew bipartisan condemnation.

A Turkish court ruled to keep prominent Turkish civil rights activist and philanthropist Osman Kavala in prison, despite his more than four years in pre-trial detention.

It was a healthy year for big gifts to charitable causes in 2021, a year that saw one of the largest multibillion-dollar contributions in more than a decade, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy tally.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has pitched a proposed law requiring people and organizations who receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents,” following the lead of countries like the United States.

Elon Musk isn’t happy.

Have you heard the one about climate change.

Bill and Melinda Gates’ private foundation announced Thursday it will spend more than $900 million over the next five years to curb global malnutrition.

Officials in the northeast China city of Harbin say national level health officials have been sent to the city to deal with what may be a coronavirus outbreak.

Victoria Hayward will be back on the field this weekend as a softball player — and as an owner.

Activists in Minneapolis are making a second attempt to get rid of the city's police department, more than a year after George Floyd's death at the hands of officers.

Republicans in Congress are alarmed by the leak of confidential IRS data to ProPublica that has enabled the investigative news organization to reveal that famous billionaires including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg paid little in U.S. income tax at times.

The richest 25 Americans pay less in tax — 15.8% of adjusted gross income — than many ordinary workers do, once you include taxes for Social Security and Medicare, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica found.

Activists, members of George Floyd’s family and some public officials say the guilty verdicts against Derek Chauvin are just a start, and they will continue to push for systemic change in policing in Minneapolis and beyond.

A new report says the coronavirus has amped up anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)BUDAPEST – The advocate general for European Union's highest court on Thursday urged the court to rule that Hungary violated the bloc's laws on asylum when it passed legislation narrowing the possibilities for asylum-seekers to receive international protection. The non-binding opinion from the European Court of Justice's Advocate General, Athanasios Rantos, states that the 2018 amendments to Hungary's asylum laws — which prohibited asylum-seekers who passed through safe countries en route to Hungary from receiving international protection — violated EU law. Opinions by advocates general are often but not always followed by the European Court of Justice, which will make a final ruling on the case at a later date. AdRantos also advised the court to rule that a Hungarian law that cracks down on organizations and individuals that provide legal assistance to asylum-seekers violates EU law. The country's prime minister, Viktor Orban, claims he is seeking to protect Hungary's conservative Christian identity and to defend Europe from immigration from the Mideast and Africa.

The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, is sending a “letter of formal notice” to the nationalist government in Budapest giving it two months to explain why it’s not complying. But Amnesty International, among those targeted, has described it as a “vicious and calculated assault on civil society” meant to silence critical voices in Hungary. Civil society organizations are key part of our democracies. We must support them, not fight them.”Eve Geddie, the Director of Amnesty’s European office, said Hungary's “shameful harassment of civil society has gone on for too long. The Hungarian government must repeal the law immediately and end their smear campaigns against NGOs.”Ad___Spike reported from Budapest.

This Friday, Jan. 8, 2021 image shows the suspended Twitter account of President Donald Trump. It began with a May 4, 2009, tweet promoting Donald Trump's upcoming appearance on David Letterman's show. “I said, ‘Let’s call you @realDonaldTrump — you’re the real Donald Trump,’” recalled Costanzo. In its most popular tweet, on Oct. 2, 2020, @realDonaldTrump announced that Trump and first lady Melania Trump had contracted the coronavirus. Trump deleted 1,166 tweets and, in his final months on the platform, had 471 tweets flagged by Twitter for misinformation, according to Factba.se.

This Friday, Jan. 8, 2021 image shows the suspended Twitter account of President Donald Trump. It began with a May 4, 2009, tweet promoting Donald Trump's upcoming appearance on David Letterman's show. “I said, ‘Let’s call you @realDonaldTrump — you’re the real Donald Trump,’” recalled Costanzo. In its most popular tweet, on Oct. 2, 2020, @realDonaldTrump announced that Trump and first lady Melania Trump had contracted the coronavirus. Trump deleted 1,166 tweets and, in his final months on the platform, had 471 tweets flagged by Twitter for misinformation, according to Factba.se.

Many Republican voters in Georgia are angry; certain that widespread voter fraud claims of which are baseless cost President Donald Trump the election. The companies deny several statements made about them, and there is no evidence any voting system switched or deleted votes in the 2020 election. That came days after Smartmatic sent a letter threatening legal action to Fox and two other networks popular with Trump supporters, Newsmax and One America News Network. A statement aired by Newsmax anchors on Monday, and also printed on the company website, was much broader and concerned both Smartmatic and Dominion. “No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election,” Newsmax said.

BUDAPEST – The U.S. Embassy in Budapest on Monday condemned an article published by a Hungarian official that drew parallels between American-Hungarian billionaire George Soros and Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The statements prompted strong reactions from several Hungarian Jewish groups and Hungarian opposition politicians while the Israeli Embassy condemned the article. More than 12,000 people including numerous Hungarian public figures like Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony have so far signed a petition demanding Demeter’s resignation. Demeter retracted the article on Sunday following the backlash and said he would delete his Facebook account. He wrote that (his article) could harm the memory of the victims, so he admitted his mistake,” Varga said, and accused the opposition members of parliament of “applying a double standard.”

BUDAPEST – After facing strong condemnation, a Hungarian commissioner on Sunday begrudgingly retracted an article comparing American-Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, a staunch critic of Hungary’s government, to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. “Europe is George Soros’ gas chamber,” Szilard Demeter, ministerial commissioner and head of the Petofi Literary Museum in Budapest, wrote in an opinion Saturday in the pro-government Origo media outlet. In a statement Sunday on Origo, Demeter said he would retract his article “independently of what I think" and will delete his Facebook page. Government media campaigns targeting Soros have led to charges of anti-Semitism. The article also noted the conflict over the European Union’s next budget, which Hungary and Poland are holding up over provisions that could block payments to countries that do not uphold democratic standards.

Republican candidate for Georgia's 14th congressional seat Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks from the bed of a pickup truck during a campaign rally Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020, in Roswell, Ga. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)ATLANTA – Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who expressed racist views and support for QAnon conspiracy theories in a series of online videos, has won a U.S. House seat representing northwest Georgia. Greene thanked her staff and asked supporters to pray for Trump to win reelection at a watch party Tuesday night, video of which was livestreamed on Facebook. “Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up - a real WINNER!”Greene initially started campaigning for a different House seat, challenging Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, made up of suburbs north of Atlanta. She switched to the more conservative 14th District after Republican Rep. Tom Graves announced that he wasn’t seeking reelection. The seat has been open since Graves stepped down in October.

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, arrives to watch Amy Coney Barrett take the Constitutional Oath on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. Ginni Thomas is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden. She is a longtime conservative activist who asked her more than 10,000 followers Oct. 26, 2020, to consider sharing a link focused on alleged corruption by Biden and his son, Hunter, as well as claims that social media companies are censoring reports about the Bidens. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, arrives to watch Amy Coney Barrett take the Constitutional Oath on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. Ginni Thomas is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)WASHINGTON – The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden. On Oct. 12, she linked to a video by conservative commentator Dan Bongino asserting that Biden is suffering from dementia. A few hours earlier, Thomas complained about apparent collusion between the media and the Biden campaign to shield the candidate from tough questions.

FILE - In this June 2, 2020, file photo, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti arrives to appeal to Black Lives Matter protesters in downtown Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)LOS ANGELES – After a scrappy debate that Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey believed lifted her campaign and was a “disaster” for her opponent, she got a text message from the LA mayor with unwelcome news: He was switching his endorsement to her challenger. A little more than half is for Gascon, the vast majority from a handful of well-heeled backers supporting justice reforms. Gascon has gained support from protests over the death of George Floyd at the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. Lacey said Gascon is pandering to supporters and that when he was San Francisco DA he never prosecuted a police killing case.

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. European Union leaders will be assessing relations with China during their final day of a summit meeting which already saw bruising talks on foreign affairs issues. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys, Pool)

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. At the heart of the conflict is the fate of the Central European University established by Soros, a Hungarian-American financier. “The decision comes too late for CEU," Soros said. Foreign universities were also compelled to carry out educational activities in their home countries. In light of Orban's views on Soros, the amendments to the academic rules were widely seen as targeting CEU.

Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal bowed out of the race against Marjorie Taylor Greene for “personal and family reasons,” his campaign manager Vinny Olsziewski told The Associated Press. Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said Friday that the window has passed for Democrats to replace Van Ausdal, likely sealing a win for the already-favored Greene. Georgia law says a candidate who withdraws less than 60 days before the election cannot be replaced on the ballot. Van Ausdal faced long odds in Georgia’s deep-red 14th Congressional District. She has also expressed support for law enforcement and railed against Black Lives Matter protests that have taken place nationwide in recent months in support of racial justice and equality.

ATLANTA – Facebook removed a photo illustration showing a Republican congressional candidate in Georgia posing with a rifle next to three Democratic House members, saying Friday that it violated the social media platform's policy against inciting violence. Greene's post featured four separate photos that had been combined to show her posing with a rifle next to Democratic U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. Omar said the post was generating death threats. After her Aug. 11 runoff victory, she inveighed against “spineless Republicans" and promised to kick Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of Congress. But she denied in a statement Friday that she was trying to incite violence.

Thousands of social media users shared posts suggesting a covert network was coordinating the protests and rioters were descending on communities across the country. Trump is picking up on unproven conspiracy theories that began spreading earlier this year during protests for racial justice. A social media message sent to Wade on Tuesday was not immediately returned. Other social media posts claimed that throngs of antifa, a term for leftist militants, were plotting to violently disrupt cities and towns. In Facebook and Twitter posts earlier this summer, Trump also blamed antifa for violence that broke out during racial justice protests.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump on Friday twice ignored a question about whether he supports QAnon, a convoluted, right-wing, pro-Trump conspiracy theory. A reporter asked the president about the theory at a White House briefing Friday after Trump tweeted his congratulations to a QAnon-supporting candidate. So absolutely, I did congratulate her, Trump said, sidestepping the question and ignoring a follow-up before moving on to another reporter. Trump has retweeted QAnon-promoting accounts, and shirts and hats with QAnon symbols and slogans are not uncommon at his rallies. Green still faces a Democrat in November, but the GOP primary was considered the real contest in a district Trump won handily in 2016.

Supporters take photos with construction executive Marjorie Taylor Greene, background right, late Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Rome, Ga. Greene, criticized for promoting racist videos and adamantly supporting the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, won the GOP nomination for northwest Georgia's 14th Congressional District. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Georgia Rep. Austin Scott, another of Greene's GOP critics before the runoff, said in a statement Wednesday she “deserves to be congratulated for her victory.”The No. 2 House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, had backed Greene's opponent in hopes of denying her the party’s nomination. Lauren Boebert, who has also expressed support for QAnon, recently upset a five-term congressman in a Republican primary in Colorado. But the GOP primary was considered the real contest. If tied too closely to Greene, Georgia Republicans in competitive races could risk alienating moderate voters, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

Meanwhile, a well-funded conservative group best known for its focus on judicial appointments is spending heavily to fight cases related to mail-in balloting procedures in court. They reveal vast infrastructure that funnels money from wealthy donors, through philanthropic organizations and political groups, which eventually trickles down to smaller nonprofits, many of which operate under murky circumstances. That includes educating the public about vote by mail, a difficult task when door-to-door canvasing isn't an option. The firm recently registered a handful of trade names for groups that appear to be focused on voting rights, records show. The group is preparing for potential foreign hacking of state voting systems, election day or post-election day violence, as well as contested results.

FILE - In this June 19, 2020, file photo, protesters wear protective masks as they march after a Juneteenth rally outside the Brooklyn Museum, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. A loose network of Facebook groups that took root across the country in April to organize protests over coronavirus stay-at-home orders has become a hub of misinformation and conspiracies theories that have pivoted to a variety of new targets. Their latest: Black Lives Matter and the nationwide protests against racial injustice. (AP Photo/John Minchillo

Their latest: Black Lives Matter and the nationwide protests against racial injustice. Their latest: Black Lives Matter and the nationwide protests of racial injustice. One group transformed itself last month from “Reopen California” to “California Patriots Pro Law & Order,” with recent posts mocking Black Lives Matter or changing the slogan to “White Lives Matter." A member of the California Facebook group posted a widely debunked flyer that says “White men, women and children, you are the enemy," which was falsely attributed to Black Lives Matter. Their latest cause — pushing for governors to reopen their states — has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers in the private Facebook groups they launched.

George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist who has long been a target of conspiracy theories, is now being falsely accused of orchestrating and funding the protests over police killings of Black people that have roiled the United States. The Hungarian-American, who is Jewish, has also been the subject of anti-Semitic attacks and conspiracy theories for decades. Experts who study conspiracy theories say the new claims about Soros are a way to delegitimize the protests and the actual reasons behind them. Experts say conspiracy theories can become a problem when they lead to threats of violence or cause people to lose trust in important institutions. Conspiracy theories are like themselves viruses, said Josh Introne, a Syracuse University information studies professor who researches conspiracy theories.

A nonprofit arm of the donor network Way to Win is working with philanthropic organizations including the Ford Foundation and George Soros' Open Society to raise the money. The efforts by Way to Win will be focused more on outreach and education. Way To Win, which was founded after Trump's 2016 victory, presents itself as a progressive alternative to established Democratic organizations. But the group says black voters have too often been neglected when it comes to private philanthropy. ___Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, Ground Game.

Centrist opposition presidential candidate, Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, center, greets a supporter as he deliver signatures for his presidential candidacy to Poland's state electoral commission in Warsaw, Poland, on Tuesday June 9, 2020. Trzaskowski had under a week to collect 100,000 signatures to formalize his candidacy, but managed to get 1.6 million. But TVP and other publicly-funded media have recently been trumpeting achievements of the governing nationalist conservative party, Law and Justice, and criticizing political opponents. Trzaskowski has emerged as Dudas main opponent, with polls showing a runoff between the two will be likely required on July 12. Last week Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in parliament that Trzaskowskis pro-LGBT position amounts to an attack on the family.

BUDAPEST – BUDAPEST, HungaryHungary’s government on Monday published a new questionnaire with 13 topics centering on the coronavirus pandemic. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has carried out several similar propaganda campaigns since returning to power in 2010. Speaking Monday in parliament, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that all Hungarian citizens would receive the questionnaire in the mail, asking them to return it by Aug. 15. “We have a very serious need to create points of agreement based on which we can also win the upcoming phases of protection” against the pandemic, Szijjarto said. Hungary has registered 4,014 coronavirus cases and 548 deaths.

The speculation was being raised by conservative news outlets and pro-Trump social media accounts, as well as impostor Facebook and Twitter accounts. Twitter and Facebook busted some of the instigators behind the unsubstantiated social media chatter. For years, some social media users have tried to delegitimize controversial or political protests with baseless theories that they were organized by wealthy financiers or extremists organizations. Police departments say people are phoning in “tips” they see on social media claiming antifa is sending buses or even planes full of antifa activists to their area. Social media users widely shared a manipulated photo of his white buses, edited to show the words “Soros Riot Dance squad” emblazoned on the sides.

A new survey says about one in four Europeans hold anti-Semitic beliefs, with such attitudes on the rise in eastern countries and mostly steady in the west. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, file)BERLIN – About one in four Europeans hold anti-Semitic beliefs, with such attitudes on the rise in eastern countries and mostly steady in the west, according to a survey released Thursday. In Western Europe, the study found that anti-Semitic views were either stable or down, with decreases in Britain, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Austria. Italy and Austria both posted significant decreases, dropping 11 percentage points and 8 percentage points to 18% and 20% with anti-Semitic attitudes respectively. The survey found that the attitudes of Muslims in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain tended to be more anti-Semitic than those countries overall.

FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2018 file photo, East Hampton, Conn., Police Chief Dennis Woessner addresses the Town Council in East Hampton. In September, Woessner told the civil rights organization that Wilcoxs Proud Boys membership didnt violate department policies. In his letter, addressed to East Hampton’s police chief, Officer Kevin Wilcox said he was a dues-paying Proud Boys member for about eight months. In September, East Hampton Police Chief Dennis Woessner told the organization that Wilcox's Proud Boys membership didn't violate department policies. Proud Boys members also have frequently clashed with counterprotesters at rallies in California and Oregon.