Facebook this week said it would bar political ads in the seven days before the presidential election. That could prevent dirty tricks or an “October surprise” and give watchdogs time to fact-check statements. But rather than responding with glee, election officials say the move leaves them worried.

Included in the ban are ads purchased by election officials — secretaries of state and boards of elections — who use Facebook to inform voters about how voting will work. The move effectively removes a key communication channel just as millions of Americans will begin to navigate a voting process different from any they’ve experienced before.

“Every state’s elections office has a very small communications office that is doing everything that they can to get the word out about the election,” said Gabe Rosenberg, the communications director for Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (who is not related to this reporter). “This just makes it a little bit harder, for, as far as I can see, no real gain.”

The rule change was announced Thursday in a Facebook post by the site’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Previously, Facebook’s rules for fact-checking certain campaign ads but not others have come under fire. Taken together, they demonstrate how Facebook has become an integral piece of the American democratic process — but one that is controlled by the decisions of a private corporation, which can set rules in its own interest.

For elections administrators, the last few days before an election can be the most stressful and when communication is needed most. They remind voters to mail back their absentee ballots and when Election Day voting begins and ends. Many of these ads can still be run under Facebook’s new rules, as long as they’re set up more than a week before the election.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, local election offices are scrambling to find new ways for eligible voters to cast their ballots. Voting methods and locations will be changing fast, even within the seven-day window included in Facebook’s ban.

A few days before Connecticut’s primary election on Aug. 11, Hurricane Isaias struck the state, knocking out power to more than a million people. That led Connecticut’s governor to make a subtle, but crucial, change to the state’s election rules on the day before the election. He instructed elections officials to count mail-in ballots that had been postmarked by election day, instead of only those that had arrived by election day.

With power still out to tens of thousands of people and businesses, “it was really important that we told people that they only needed to postmark their ballots by election day, because the little bit of news they were getting was that the Postal Service was down,” Rosenberg said. The Postal Service’s sorting hub in Hartford had lost power for a time after the storm.

“The only way we can notify people of something changing that late in the process is via Facebook and Instagram,” he said, citing the decline of local print news and the power outage making TV out of the question. The office spent about $2,000 on ads in the week before the state’s primary, according to Facebook’s published data.

There are other scenarios under which election administrators might have an urgent need to communicate changes to voters. Dozens of cases that could affect voting rules are wending their way through state courts, including ones that govern how mail-in ballots are processed and whether felons are able to vote. A key decision could easily be made just days before Nov. 3.

Just this week, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced a $250 million donation meant, in part, to help expand voting locations, which could result in new polling places opening late in the process.

Facebook’s newly announced rules only apply to new ads about “social issues, elections or politics.” Ads placed beforehand can continue running.

There is some basis for the timing: The last few days before an election can be rife with tactics meant to avoid scrutiny.

Without a key way to communicate how polling places are changing, the chances mount that potential voters will miss important information.

Facebook said it is trying to help elections officials, not hinder them. “We’re committed to supporting the important work election administrators do to make voting possible,” Tom Channick, a Facebook spokesperson, said in a statement. He cited new Facebook tools for election administrators, including “Voting Alerts” and a page on Facebook that offers information on how to vote.

Unlike ads, the alerts don’t appear on Instagram, only on Facebook. They appear on the voting information page, but they wouldn’t show up in a user’s news feed unless they had previously subscribed to updates from the election administrators’ Facebook page. And Facebook won’t let election administrators use the voting alert tool unless their Facebook pages do not include the name or a photograph of the officeholder. Connecticut’s page, for instance, does include such information, as do the pages of elections officials in many other states.

Facebook told ProPublica that it’s sticking to its decision to include election-administration ads in the ban, but has offered to help administrators change their pages to be able to use Voting Alerts and says it’s considering ways to show the alerts more broadly.

Rosenberg says an easy solution would be to exempt election administrators’ ads from the temporary ban — or to stop counting their ads as political and forcing them to include “Paid for by” disclaimers like ads from campaigns.

That’s a solution that Facebook has used before. Facebook exempted news organizations’ ads that promoted news stories from being treated as political after pushback that the site was conflating ads for journalism with political propaganda. Facebook didn’t, however, exempt ads from the U.S. Census Bureau that urged people to fill out the census.

Rosenberg says he’s pressed Facebook for an answer about why their political ads rules apply to election administrators’ ads. He hasn’t gotten one.

“These aren’t political ads. These are the basic civic building blocks of a democracy,” Rosenberg says. “We’re just trying to make sure that voters have the info that they need in order to participate.”

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When Dr. Zachary Sussman went to Physicians Premier ER in Austin for a COVID-19 antibody test, he assumed he would get a freebie because he was a doctor for the chain. Instead, the free-standing emergency room charged his insurance company an astonishing $10,984 for the visit — and got paid every penny, with no pushback.

The bill left him so dismayed he quit his job. And now, after ProPublica’s questions, the parent company of his insurer said the case is being investigated and could lead to repayment or a referral to law enforcement.

The case is the latest to show how providers have sometimes charged exorbitant prices for visits for simple and inexpensive COVID-19 tests. ProPublica recently reported how a $175 COVID-19 test resulted in charges of $2,479 at a different free-standing ER in Texas. In that situation, the health plan said the payment for the visit would be reduced and the facility said the family would not receive a bill. In Sussman’s case, the insurer paid it all. But those dollars come from people who pay insurance premiums, and health experts say high prices are a major reason why Americans pay so much for health care.

Sussman, a 44-year-old pathologist, was working under contract as a part-time medical director at four of Physicians Premier’s other locations. He said he made $4,000 a month to oversee the antibody tests, which can detect signs of a previous COVID-19 infection. It was a temporary position holding him over between hospital gigs in Austin and New Mexico, where he now lives and works.

WASHINGTON – A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Census Bureau plan to end its counting a month earlier than planned, ruling in a suit joined last week by the Navajo Nation and Gila River Indian Community.

The order Saturday by U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh said the plaintiffs in the case – which also included civil rights groups, individuals and local governments including Harris County, Texas, and the city of Los Angeles – had raised “serious questions” about the bureau’s plan to stop counting, or enumeration, on Sept. 30

She ordered the bureau to put on hold any plans to wind down enumeration until at least Sept. 17, when a fuller hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled, and to keep counting in the meantime.

In an email Saturday to its managers, the Census Bureau said it and the Commerce Department are “obligated to comply with the Court’s Order and are taking immediate steps to do so” and that “enumeration will continue.”

Plaintiffs in the case welcomed the judge’s temporary restraining order, or TRO.

“I hope that this TRO causes the Census Bureau to rethink its rush plan and go back to its original Covid-19 plan and avoid the need for further litigation,” Gila River Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said in an emailed statement Sunday.

The threats of an undercount are particularly acute in Arizona and on tribal lands. Total Census response rate for the nation was 89.6% Sunday, compared to 79.4% in Arizona, tied for third-lowest in the country.

While the bureau does not break out the total response rate for tribes, it does give self-response rates, which lag the national numbers badly. Compared to a national self-response rate of 65.3% as of last week, the Navajo Nation rate was 18.7% and the Gila River tribe’s rate was 9.9%.

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the many plaintiffs in the case, said the judge’s order halted the “Trump administration’s attempted short-circuiting of our nation’s census as an imminent threat to the completion of a fair and accurate process.”

“President Trump and (Commerce Secretary Wilbur) Ross’ decisions to undermine the process may have deprived vulnerable communities of fair representation and fair allocation of funds for the next 10 years or more,” Clark said Saturday in a prepared statement.

This is not the first legal challenge to the 2020 Census, with the Supreme Court ruling last year that the bureau could not include a citizenship question on the census form. (File photo by Miranda Faulkner/Cronkite News)

That was one of the main arguments of the lawsuit, which said a Census undercount would deprive many communities, particularly minority communities, with less congressional representation and fewer federal funds than they should get based on a complete count.

The Census Bureau is required by law to report a count to the president on Dec. 31 and had originally planned to stop enumeration on July 31. But faced with the difficulties of counting the population during the COVID-19 pandemic, the bureau on April 13 adopted a plan that pushed the enumeration date back to Oct. 31, with a delivery date of the new census data sometime in early 2021.

But on Aug. 3, the agency suddenly changed course, announcing that enumeration would end Sept. 30 and the new census data would be delivered Dec. 31.

As recently as Friday, Ross was writing that the Census Bureau would be able to wrap up “a complete and accurate field data collection” by Sept. 30 and deliver “fully processed reports to President Donald Trump by Dec. 31.”

But critics said it would be impossible to deliver an accurate count on the shortened timeline, with the House Oversight and Reform Committee releasing an internal Census report last week that said it would lead to “high risk of serious error” and “decreased data quality.”

In their suit, the plaintiff said the new deadlines would “sacrifice the accuracy of the 2020 Census by forcing the Census Bureau to compress eight and a half months of vital data-collection and data-processing into four and a half months.” They called the actions “unconstitutional and illegal.”

“There was a change in the U.S. Census headquarters without giving any consultation to citizens of the Navajo Nation,” said Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez. “Usually when a federal agency makes a change there should be tribal consultation.”

Koh said there were “serious questions” about whether the Aug. 3 plan could be reviewed, by the court, whether the plan was arbitrary and capricious” and whether the plaintiffs even have standing to sue.

But she also said the plaintiffs had identified “four potential irreparable harms” the plaintiffs could suffer as a result of an undercount: potential loss of federal funding, federal representation, costs to mitigate an undercount and local government costs for services that rely on an accurate count.

“Because the decennial census is at issue here, an inaccurate count would not be remedied for another decade, which would affect the distribution of federal and state funding, the deployment of services, and the allocation of local resources for a decade,” Koh wrote.

She rejected agency arguments against an order, pointing to statements by two officials that the agency had already passed the point at which it could deliver an accurate count on Dec. 31. She also pointed to a statement by Albert E. Fontenot Jr., associate director of decennial census programs, that a restraining order would be harder to reverse later this month, when the agency would have laid off many of its temporary workers and would be unable to call them back.

Lewis said that suing the federal government was not a decision the Gila River Indian Indian community took lightly, but that it felt it had to take the action to “protect all of our interests in an accurate census count.”

“The Community is pleased that the court recognized the urgency of keeping the census count moving forward as it had been while this litigation is moving forward,” Lewis’ statement said.

PHOENIX – As Arizona bars have reopened after months of being shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, owners and managers are struggling to comply with state health department regulations that require logistical twists.

One Phoenix bar owner has adapted by moving operations outdoors while another said he has three bars with different limitations.

“You’re allowed to be open but you can’t really function,” said Frank Vairo, who owns bars in Phoenix.

Businesses can only reopen by meeting specific requirements set by the Arizona Department of Health Services. A hotline and online form are available to report complaints on the department’s website.

As of Sept. 3, the department has received 1,200 complaints, with 75% in Maricopa County – but the level of enforcement isn’t clear. Some bar owners and a health official say the system doesn’t work.

“You have this environment where bars and nightclubs are opening, and the open question to me is, what does the compliance system look like for ensuring bars and nightclubs operate safely?” said Will Humble, executive director for the nonprofit Arizona Public Health Association.

The system is based on COVID-19 transmission level. Health officials released a report on Aug. 27 categorizing each county’s COVID-19 transmission level, with Maricopa County deemed moderate.

The patio at Thunderbird Lounge lends itself to social distancing. Some owners and managers of other bars are struggling to comply with state regulations. (Photo courtesy of Charles Barth)

Businesses affected by a reopening pause in June were allowed to partially reopen without direct approval from the AZDHS if their county’s transmission level was listed as moderate or minimal for at least two weeks. The only requirement is to sign a form that states their commitment to the guidelines.

Bars and nightclubs must follow the requirements listed by the AZDHS according to their county’s community spread level. In the “moderate” level, bars and nightclubs can open at 50% capacity only if converted to a restaurant service.

The requirements for restaurants and bars include social distancing measures and mask mandates. Dancing, karaoke, and games of darts or pool are not allowed.

Jamie Bates is the manager of Bull Shooters Billiards & Sports Bar in Phoenix.

“I wish they could assess each business on its own,” Bates said. “We’re a pool hall first, so we have 45 pool tables, 15 dartboards, and that’s what people come here for. So, when one of the mandates is, ‘no parlor games’ – we might as well not even be open, honestly. That’s really hurting us.”
The state has shut down three bars.

Two Scottsdale bars were cited for violating state restrictions on their first day of being open. Casa Amigos and Bottled Blonde were ordered to shut down immediately, according to news accounts. A Tempe bar, Glow Shot and Cocktails, also was ordered to close.

The Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control suspended the liquor licenses of Casa Amigos and Bottled Blonde on Aug. 28 for not following the guidelines, according to a news release. Representatives for Casa Amigos declined to comment. Bottled Blonde and Glow Shots and Cocktails could not be reached for comment.

“Detectives will continue to enforce public health orders and take immediate actions against licensees who are observed showing general disregard for the welfare and safety of others,” John Cocca, Department of Liquor director, said in the news release.

According to the department’s May report, it conducted 225 routine liquor inspections by the end of the fiscal year in June. Since July, there have been 166 routine inspections.

Also in June, 481 site inspections were completed. Since July, 389 site inspections have been completed.

The AZDHS website has a hotline and online form to report establishments that are not complying with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for general health safety or abiding by AZDHS requirements for businesses.

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It’s not popular with some bar owners.

“I don’t like it at all,” Bates said. “It forces us to walk on eggshells. Even if we’re doing everything right, if we make someone mad at all or they get mad, they can complain for any reason.”

Ronetta Andersen, who has owned Final Round Sports Bar & Grill in Tempe for seven years, says her regulars are keeping her afloat.

“Supposedly, with this hotline that they’ve set up, I guess people can turn in whoever if they feel like they are not following those guidelines,” Andersen said.

Andersen said everyone – including customers and employees – wears a mask in Final Round, and tables and chairs have been set up 6 feet apart. Along with continuous sanitizing, Andersen sticks with the 50% capacity rule from the AZDHS – but she is not convinced the bars are reported fairly to the AZDHS.

An ADHS spokeswoman said over email, however, that many steps are taken before an establishment is closed down for a violation.

“ADHS coordinates with the local public health departments and the Department of Liquor Licenses and Control (DLLC) to verify complaint claims prior to implementing any enforcement action,” wrote ADHS spokeswoman Holly Poynter. “While we are committed to strict enforcement of the requirements outlined at www.azhealth.gov/businessCOVID19, we do our best to work with businesses to bring them into compliance first.

“If a business is found to violate the COVID-19 prevention requirements, ADHS consults legal counsel on potential next steps. This may include seeking a temporary restraining order, issuing a citation, or even the immediate temporary closure of an establishment until health guidance is met,” her email said.

Tempe Police Detective Natalie Barela said the department educates the public and business owners to maintain safety protocols. Barela said the police department is authorized to deliver citations but not make arrests.

Thunderbird Lounge owners (from left) Jacob Wiedmann, Jeremiah Gratza and Brett Boyles are using their 4,000 square foot patio to comply with the department of health guidelines that require social distancing and mask wearing. (Photo courtesy of Charles Barth)

A Phoenix bar owner said he has been able to adapt.

Jeremiah Gratza, a co-owner of Thunderbird Lounge in Phoenix, switched his bar to a restaurant style of operating. He said they set up 25 tables in their 4,000-square-foot patio. A host seats customers after taking their temperatures. Bartenders take drink orders at the tables.

“You never have to get up and leave your table,” Gratza said.

Thunderbird Lounge has received positive feedback from customers, he said, adding that visitors have respected the new rules and have been “super friendly, super warm and super inviting.”

But Frank Vairo, owner of three bars in Phoenix, said he has had trouble adapting to state requirements at every location: The Bar is small, making it harder to meet social distancing guidelines. The Dilly Dally is a larger space that allows for better social distancing, but people still have to wait to enter if it is at 50% capacity. At The Breakroom, which is a pool hall, guests cannot play pool or dance because of social distance guidelines.

“They’re not our rules but we have to uphold them,” Vairo said. His restaurant, Nook Kitchen, had to permanently close due to the pandemic.

Humble, the public health advocate, wonders whether the state can bring bars and restaurants that don’t have safety protocols into compliance.

“I don’t know if there’s going to be a decent enforcement program – which means that the bars and nightclubs will likely start amplifying the virus, as happened in May and June,” Humble said. “Unless they put in a good compliance system to ensure nobody cheats.”

Politicians and veterans issued sharp rebukes late last week, after a report that President Donald Trump used insulting language like “losers” and “suckers” to describe Americans killed in battle during World War I and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

The commander in chief has previously made harsh comments about McCain but denied the accuracy of the report in The Atlantic Thursday, which relied on anonymous sources to report that the president pushed back against plans to visit a World War I memorial and cemetery where American military are buried during a 2018 trip to France.

The Atlantic reported that Trump said the cemetery is “filled with losers,” and referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who died in the nearby battle as “suckers.”

The White House said the visit was canceled because of foggy, rainy weather at the time, Trump told reporters Thursday night.

Trump also called the story “fake” in a tweet Friday, denying he made the comments.

While the sources in The Atlantic spoke to the magazine on the condition of anonymity, the Associated Press has since independently confirmed many of the comments.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, a combat veteran who was deployed to Iraq with the Marines and a vocal critic of Trump, tweeted Thursday that Trump has “no honor” and “can never understand the sacrifice” of American service members.

“Even in a thousand lifetimes Trump couldn’t come close to matching the honor, courage, & commitment of the men I served with & the men we buried,” Gallego wrote.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, and Arizona Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly have since issued comments reiterating support for McCain, who represented Arizona as U.S. senator from 1987-2018 and ran for president twice.

A spokesperson for Sen. Martha McSally, R-Arizona, said in a statement that McSally “has no interest in moderating a fight between The Atlantic and the president over anonymously sourced accusations that have been debunked on the record. As a combat veteran herself, her views on the military and the heroes who sacrificed so much to protect our freedoms are well-documented.”

Both Kelly and McSally served in the military. Kelly is a retired U.S. Navy combat pilot, and McSally is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel. Trump’s popularity among service members has been on the decline.

Despite his denials, Trump has openly criticized McCain in the past. In 2015, Trump said he did not consider McCain, who was a prisoner of war for more than five years during the Vietnam War, to be a war hero because “I like people who weren’t captured.”

In comments made to the media Thursday night, Trump said he “disagreed with John McCain” but that he “still respected him.” Trump also brought up McCain’s 2018 funeral as an example of how he respected McCain, a point he echoed on Twitter, saying he approved funeral plans “without hesitation and without complaint” because he felt McCain “deserved it.”

Yet, Trump’s negative comments about McCain have continued since McCain’s death, and his daughter Meghan McCain took to Twitter to say that Trump has been “vile and disgusting” toward her family.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has not commented on the controversy but shared a video on Twitter Friday morning of McCain accepting the Republican nomination for president at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

In the clip of McCain’s speech that Ducey shared, McCain urges the audience to “stand up to defend our country from its enemies” and to “stand up for each other.”

The Trump administration also faces criticism for a Pentagon memo announcing the closure of Stars and Stripes, an independent news organization that caters to the U.S. military community.

Sinema was part of a bipartisan group of 15 senators that sent a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sept. 2, asking him to reverse the decision and provide Stars and Stripes with the necessary funding.

Gallego called the defunding of Stars and Stripes “another attack on the Press.”

Trump tweeted Friday afternoon that Stars and Stripes funding would be restored.

In a news conference Friday, representatives who served in the military said Trump’s continuing comments against McCain and the issue with Stars and Stripes was reflective of the larger relationship between Trump and the U.S. military.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., said Trump started his administration off on a “bad foot” with service members when he had “undermined” the service of McCain.

The representatives on the call agreed that despite Trump’s denial, his history of comments against the military and service members made The Atlantic report believable.

Mayor Regina Romero and Council Member Paul Durham have proposed a Tucson Climate Emergency Declaration as part of a nationwide call for mobilization to act locally and think globally as a community of communities.

This declaration focuses on issues relevant to our Southwest region needs, including resource conservation, restoring and rehabilitating ecosystems through green infrastructure, and carbon sequestration with a focus on massive tree planting.

A comprehensive climate action and adaptation plan is needed to ensure good quality jobs for a just and equitable transition as we recover from our current COVID-19 crisis. These efforts need community support and adoption. Local First Arizona is in full support.

The climate emergency is indeed the greatest emergency. Scientists have put the crisis in sharp focus: we have less than a decade to act before there is irreversible damage to our communities and economy.

As the largest local business coalition in the country, Local First Arizona supports the established science and our sustainability programs focus on taking action to support both businesses and the community through plans and strategies that are cost-effective and provide long-term economic and community benefits. Our award-winning SCALE UP project planning program provides support for businesses and nonprofits focused on beneficial sustainability strategies that also support the community’s needs in our current crisis.

We are already experiencing realities of the climate crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic. The United Nations finds that zoonotic diseases such as the disease caused by the novel coronavirus are spreading with greater frequency due to human activity, including industrial farming and deforestation.