NEW YORK (AP) — The director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government stepped down Tuesday amid blowback from Donald Trump’s campaign, which has tried to disavow the program created by many of the former president’s allies and former aides.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said Paul Dans’ exit comes after the project “completed exactly what it set out to do.” Roberts, who has emerged as a chief spokesman for the effort, plans to lead Project 2025 going forward.

“Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue,” Roberts said.

What started as an obscure far-right wish list is now a focal point in the 2024 campaign. Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be.

The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president. Heritage is building a database of potential new hires to staff a second Trump White House.

Yet Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document, saying on social media he hasn’t read it and doesn’t know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the “severe right” and some of the things in it are “seriously extreme.”

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

They said, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”

But Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, wrote a foreword to a forthcoming book by Roberts in which he lauds the Heritage Foundation’s work. A copy of the foreword was obtained by The Associated Press.

“The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump,” wrote Vance.

Quoting Roberts elsewhere in the book, Vance writes: ″We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”

Trump campaign representatives did not respond to messages inquiring about whether the campaign asked or pushed for Dans to step down from the project. The Heritage Foundation said Dans left voluntarily and it was not under pressure from the Trump campaign. Dans didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Project 2025 has many ties to Trump’s orbit

In many ways, Project 2025 served as a potential far-right White House in waiting, a constellation of outside groups that would be ready for action if Trump wins a second term.

The project included not only the detailed policy proposals that Trump could put into place on day one at the White House. Project 2025 was also building a personnel database of resumes for potential hires, drawing Americans to Washington to staff a new Trump administration.

Many Trump allies and former top aides contributed to the project. Dans formerly worked as a personnel official for the Trump administration. And Trump regularly campaigns on many of the same proposals in the Project 2025 book — from mass deportations to upending the Justice Department — though some of its other proposals, including further taxes on tips, conflict with some of what Trump has pledged on the campaign trail.

It was clear that Project 2025 was becoming a liability for Trump and the Republican Party.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and top Democrats have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025 as they argue against a second term for the former president.

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 remains linked to Trump’s agenda, written by his allies for him to “inflict” on the country.

“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” said Harris for President Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

For months Trump’s campaign had warned outside groups, and Heritage in particular, that they did not speak for the former president.

In an interview from the Republican convention first published by Politico, LaCivita said Project 2025 was a problem because “the issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about.”

It was almost certain than Trump’s campaign forced the shakeup, said one former Heritage aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation.

Trump’s team was well aware it couldn’t risk any missteps from Heritage in this final stretch ahead of the election.

By announcing the departure, Roberts appeared to be sending a signal to the Trump campaign that changes were being made at Heritage to tamp down any concerns over Project 2025, said another conservative familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

If Trump wins the White House, he almost certainly will need to rely on Heritage and other outside entities to help quickly staff a new administration, the person said.

Heritage says Project 2025 is not going away

Project 2025’s website will remain live and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential officials eager to execute its vision for government, the Heritage Foundation said Tuesday.

The group said Dans, who had started the project from scratch more than two years ago, will leave the Heritage Foundation in August. Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations.

Roberts has faced criticism in recent weeks after he said on an episode of former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

Earlier this month, in an interview before beginning a prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena, Bannon mentioned Roberts as the type of leader who could land a top job in a Trump White House.

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Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised $200 million since she emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee last week, an eyepopping haul in her race against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

The campaign, which announced its latest fundraising total on Sunday, said the bulk of the donations — 66% — comes from first-time contributors in the 2024 election cycle and were made after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race and endorsed Harris.

Over 170,000 volunteers have also signed up to help the Harris campaign with phone banking, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts. Election Day is 100 days away.

“The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real — and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a memo.

Her campaign said it held some 2,300 organizing events in battleground states this weekend as several high-profile Democrats under consideration to serve as Harris’ running mate stumped for her.

Harris campaigned in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday, drawing hundreds to a fundraiser that had been organized when Biden was still at the top of the Democratic ticket. The fundraiser had originally been expected to raise $400,000 but ended bringing in about $1.4 million, according to the campaign.

Mandy Robbins, 45, of Decatur, Georgia, drove to one of those organizing events Sunday in the northern suburbs of Atlanta to hear Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a potential Harris running mate.

She thought Biden did a “great job” in the White House, but acknowledged she “would not have been nearly this excited” if he remained in the race.

“I finally feel hopeful now,” Robbins said. She added, “We can win this with Harris”

Beshear spoke from experience to supporters, telling them their work could be the difference in what’s expected to be a close race. Beshear won his 2019 campaign by a margin of about 5,000 votes of 1.41 million ballots cast. He was reelected in November by a relatively comfortable margin.

“Every door knock mattered. Every phone call mattered. Every difficult conversation that people had with their uncle at Thanksgiving mattered,” Beshear said of his 2019 race. “Everyone here today that signs up to volunteer … you might be the difference in winning this race for Vice President Harris.”

Meanwhile, Trump, running mate Sen. JD Vance and their surrogates stepped up efforts to frame Harris as a far-left politician out of touch with with the American mainstream.

Vance said after a stop at a diner in Waite Park, Minnesota, on Sunday that Harris has “got a little bit of a bump from her introduction” but predicted it would soon dissipate.

“Look, the people are going to learn her record,” Vance said. “They’re going to learn that she’s a radical. They’re going to learn that she’s basically a San Francisco liberal who wants to take San Francisco policies to the entire country.”

Vance was echoing Trump, who in a campaign appearance with Vance in St. Cloud, Minnesota on Saturday, called Harris a “crazy liberal,” accused her of wanting to “defund the police” and said she was an “absolute radical” on abortion. Harris, a vocal proponent of abortion rights, has made clear that she will make Republican-backed efforts to restrict reproductive rights a key plank in her campaign.

“There is no liberal horse that she has chosen not to ride,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “

Trump backer Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also tried to brand Harris as a full partner for “a lot of the worst decisions of the Biden administration,” including the chaotic August 2021 pullout of U.S. troops led to the swift collapse of the Afghan government and military.

Cotton also accused Harris of emboldening Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah by pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over civilian casualties in the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu met separately with Harris and Biden at the White House on Thursday. Afterward, Harris said she urged Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire deal soon with the militant group Hamas so that dozens of hostages held by the militants in Gaza since Oct. 7 can return home. Harris said she also affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself but expressed deep concern about the high death toll in Gaza and the “dire” humanitarian situation there.

Tensions in the Mideast intensified on Saturday after Israeli authorities said a rocket from Lebanon struck a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teenagers. The strike raised fears of a broader regional war between Israel and Hezbollah, which denied a role in the attack.

Trump at his Saturday rally said the Golan Heights incident “will go down as another moment in history created by a weak and ineffective United States president and vice president.” And Vance on Sunday accused Harris of being “a disaster” on the conflict.

Still, some Republicans are concerned that Harris’ entrance has given Democrats a spark and that Trump needs to recalibrate.

Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H., said Harris is in “honeymoon” period that will probably last a month, but he also said that both Trump and Vance should stop the personal attacks against Harris because those will not drive people to vote. Instead, he said they must stick to the issues and “stay away from the insults.”

He said Trump missed an opportunity to do that in recent campaign events, but “hopefully they can get back on track.” Sununu, however, acknowledged that ”nobody can get Donald Trump to do anything” he doesn’t want to do.

“But hopefully the numbers, the polls, will get Donald Trump to realize what was working and what didn’t,” Sununu said

Graham was on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sununu was on ABC’s “This Week, and Cotton was on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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Price reported from Waite Park, Minnesota, and Barrow from Cumming, Georgia. Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

The satirical TV commercial, paid for by a rival political action committee, used artificial intelligence to depict Perkins as a high school student who had been called into the principal’s office. Instead of giving a tongue-lashing for cheating on a test or getting in a fight, the principal blasted Perkins for failing to keep communities safe and create jobs.

The video superimposed Perkins’ face onto the body of an actor playing him. Although the ad was labeled as being created with “deep learning computer technology,” Perkins said it was powerful and resonated with voters. He didn’t have enough money or campaign staff to counteract it, and thinks it was one of many reasons he lost the 2022 race. A representative for the group behind the ad did not respond to a request for comment.

“One hundred percent the deepfake ad affected our campaign because we were a down-ballot, less resourced place,” said Perkins, a Democrat. “You had to pick and choose where you put your efforts.”

While such attacks are staples of the rough-and-tumble of political campaigning, the ad targeting Perkins was notable: It’s believed to be one of the first examples of an AI deepfake deployed in a political race in the U.S. It also foreshadowed a dilemma facing candidates in scores of state and local races this year as generative AI has become more widespread and easier to use.

The technology — which can do everything from streamlining mundane campaign tasks to creating fake images, video or audio — already has been deployed in some national races around the country and has spread far more widely in elections across the globe. Despite its power as a tool to mislead, efforts to regulate it have been piecemeal or delayed, a gap that could have the greatest impact on lower-profile races down the ballot.

Artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword for candidates running such campaigns. Inexpensive, user-friendly AI models can help them save money and time on some of their day-to-day tasks. But they often don’t have the staff or expertise to combat AI-generated falsehoods, adding to fears that an eleventh-hour deepfake could fool enough voters to tilt races decided by narrow margins.

“AI-enabled threats affect close races and low-profile contests where slight shifts matter and where there are often fewer resources correcting misleading stories,” said Josh Lawson, director of AI and democracy for the Aspen Institute.

National safeguards lacking

Some local candidates already have faced criticism for deploying AI in misleading ways, from a Republican state senate candidate in Tennessee who used an AI headshot to make himself look slimmer and younger to Philadelphia’s Democratic sheriff, whose reelection campaign promoted fake news stories generated by ChatGPT.

The Democrat, who has worked extensively on AI-related legislation as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said AI-generated misinformation is easier to spot and combat in high-profile races because they are under greater scrutiny. When an AI-generated robocall impersonated President Joe Biden to discourage voters from going to the polls in the New Hampshire primary this year, it was quickly reported in the media and investigated, resulting in serious consequences for the players behind it.

More than a third of states have passed laws regulating artificial intelligence in politics, and legislation aimed specifically at fighting election-related deepfakes has received bipartisan support in each state where it has passed, according to the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

But Congress has yet to act, despite several bipartisan groups of lawmakers proposing such legislation.

“Congress is pathetic,” said Warner, who said he was pessimistic about Congress passing any legislation protecting elections from AI interference this year.

Travis Brimm, executive director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, called the specter of AI misinformation in down-ballot races an evolving issue in which people are “still working to figure out the best way forward.”

“This is a real challenge, and that’s why you’ve seen Democratic secretaries jump to address it and pass real legislation with real penalties around the abuse of AI,” Brimm said.

A spokesperson for the Republican Secretaries of State Committee did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.

How do you regulate integrity?

While experts and lawmakers worry about how generative AI attacks could skew an election, some candidates for state or local office said AI tools have proven invaluable to their campaigns. The powerful computer systems, software or processes can emulate aspects of human work and cognition.

Glenn Cook, a Republican running for a state legislative seat in southeastern Georgia, is less well-known and has much less campaign cash than the incumbent he is facing in a runoff election on Tuesday. So, he has invested in a digital consultant who creates much of his campaign’s content using inexpensive, publicly available generative AI models.

On his website, AI-generated articles are peppered with AI-generated images of community members smiling and chatting, none of whom actually exist. AI-generated podcast episodes use a cloned version of his voice to narrate his policy positions.

Cook said he reviews everything before it is made public. The savings — in both time and money — have let him knock on more doors in the district and attend more in-person campaign events.

“My wife and I did 4,500 doors down here,” he said. “It frees you up to do a lot.”

Cook’s opponent, Republican state Rep. Steven Sainz, said he thinks Cook “hides behind what amounts to a robot instead of authentically communicating his opinions to voters.”

“I’m not running on artificially generated promises, but real-world results,” Sainz said, adding that he isn’t using AI in his own campaign.

Republican voters in the district weren’t sure what to make of the use of AI in the race, but said they cared most about the candidates’ values and outreach on the campaign trail. Patricia Rowell, a retired Cook voter, said she likes that he’s been in her community three or four times while campaigning, while Mike Perry, a self-employed Sainz voter, said he’s felt more personal contact from Sainz.

He said the expanded use of AI in politics is inevitable, but wondered how voters would be able to differentiate between what’s true and what’s not.

“It’s free speech, you know, and I don’t want to discourage free speech, but it comes down to the integrity of the people putting it out,” he said. “And I don’t know how you regulate integrity. It’s pretty tough.”

Local campaigns are vulnerable

Digital firms that market AI models for political campaigns told the AP most of the AI use in local campaigns so far is minimal and designed to boost efficiency for tedious tasks, such as analyzing survey data or drafting social media copy that meets a certain word limit.

Political consultants are increasingly dabbling with AI tools to see what works, according to a new report from a team led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. More than 20 political operatives from across the ideological spectrum told researchers they were experimenting with generative AI models in this year’s campaigns, even though they also feared that less scrupulous actors might be doing the same.

“Local-level elections will be so much more challenging because people will be attacking,” said Zelly Martin, the report’s lead author and a senior research fellow at the university’s Center for Media Engagement. “And what recourse do they have to fight back, as opposed to Biden and Trump who have many more resources to fend off attacks?”

There are immense differences in staffing, money and expertise between down-ballot campaigns — for state legislator, mayor, school board or any other local position —- and races for federal office. Where a local campaign might have just a handful of staffers, competitive U.S. House and Senate campaigns may have dozens and presidential operations can balloon to the thousands by the end of the campaign.

The campaigns for Biden and former President Donald Trump are both experimenting with AI to enhance fundraising and voter outreach efforts. Mia Ehrenberg, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said they also have a plan to debunk AI-generated misinformation. A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to the AP’s questions about their plans for handling AI-generated misinformation.

Perkins, the former Shreveport mayor, had a small team that decided to ignore the attack and keep campaigning when the deepfake of him being hauled into the principal’s office hit local TV. He said he viewed the deepfake ad against him as a typical dirty trick at the time, but the rise of AI in just two years since his campaign has made him realize the technology’s power as a tool to mislead voters.

“In politics, people are always going to push the envelope a bit to be effective,” he said. “We had no idea how significant it would be.”

Burke reported from San Francisco, Merica from Washington and Swenson from New York.

This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy, and from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

Researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate tested six of the most popular AI voice-cloning tools to see if they would generate audio clips of five false statements about elections in the voices of eight prominent American and European politicians.

In a total of 240 tests, the tools generated convincing voice clones in 193 cases, or 80% of the time, the group found. In one clip, a fake U.S. President Joe Biden says election officials count each of his votes twice. In another, a fake French President Emmanuel Macron warns citizens not to vote because of bomb threats at the polls.

The findings reveal a remarkable gap in safeguards against the use of AI-generated audio to mislead voters, a threat that increasingly worries experts as the technology has become both advanced and accessible. While some of the tools have rules or tech barriers in place to stop election disinformation from being generated, the researchers found many of those obstacles were easy to circumvent with quick workarounds.

Only one of the companies whose tools were used by the researchers responded after multiple requests for comment. ElevenLabs said it was constantly looking for ways to boost its safeguards.

With few laws in place to prevent abuse of these tools, the companies’ lack of self-regulation leaves voters vulnerable to AI-generated deception in a year of significant democratic elections around the world. E.U. voters head to the polls in parliamentary elections in less than a week, and U.S. primary elections are ongoing ahead of the presidential election this fall.

“It’s so easy to use these platforms to create lies and to force politicians onto the back foot denying lies again and again and again,” said the center’s CEO, Imran Ahmed. “Unfortunately, our democracies are being sold out for naked greed by AI companies who are desperate to be first to market … despite the fact that they know their platforms simply aren’t safe.”

The center — a nonprofit with offices in the U.S., the U.K. and Belgium — conducted the research in May. Researchers used the online analytics tool Semrush to identify the six publicly available AI voice-cloning tools with the most monthly organic web traffic: ElevenLabs, Speechify, PlayHT, Descript, Invideo AI and Veed.

Next, they submitted real audio clips of the politicians speaking. They prompted the tools to impersonate the politicians’ voices making five baseless statements.

In addition to Biden and Macron, the tools made lifelike copies of the voices of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, former U.S. President Donald Trump, United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, U.K. Labour Leader Keir Starmer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and E.U. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.

“None of the AI voice cloning tools had sufficient safety measures to prevent the cloning of politicians’ voices or the production of election disinformation,” the report said.

Some of the tools — Descript, Invideo AI and Veed — require users to upload a unique audio sample before cloning a voice, a safeguard to prevent people from cloning a voice that isn’t their own. Yet the researchers found that barrier could be easily circumvented by generating a unique sample using a different AI voice cloning tool.

One tool, Invideo AI, not only created the fake statements the center requested but extrapolated them to create further disinformation.

When producing the audio clip instructing Biden’s voice clone to warn people of a bomb threat at the polls, it added several of its own sentences.

“This is not a call to abandon democracy but a plea to ensure safety first,” the fake audio clip said in Biden’s voice. “The election, the celebration of our democratic rights, is only delayed, not denied.”

Overall, in terms of safety, Speechify and PlayHT performed the worst of the tools, generating believable fake audio in all 40 of their test runs, the researchers found.

ElevenLabs performed the best and was the only tool that blocked the cloning of U.K. and U.S. politicians’ voices. However, the tool still allowed for the creation of fake audio in the voices of prominent E.U. politicians, the report said.

Aleksandra Pedraszewska, Head of AI Safety at ElevenLabs, said in an emailed statement that the company welcomes the report and the awareness it raises about generative AI manipulation.

She said ElevenLabs recognizes there is more work to be done and is “constantly improving the capabilities of our safeguards,” including the company’s blocking feature.

“We hope other audio AI platforms follow this lead and roll out similar measures without delay,” she said.

The other companies cited in the report didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.

The findings come after AI-generated audio clips already have been used in attempts to sway voters in elections across the globe.

In fall 2023, just days before Slovakia’s parliamentary elections, audio clips resembling the voice of the liberal party chief were shared widely on social media. The deepfakes purportedly captured him talking about hiking beer prices and rigging the vote.

Earlier this year, AI-generated robocalls mimicked Biden’s voice and told New Hampshire primary voters to stay home and “save” their votes for November. A New Orleans magician who created the audio for a Democratic political consultant demonstrated to the AP how he made it, using ElevenLabs software.

Experts say AI-generated audio has been an early preference for bad actors, in part because the technology has improved so quickly. Only a few seconds of real audio are needed to create a lifelike fake.

Yet other forms of AI-generated media also are concerning experts, lawmakers and tech industry leaders. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and other popular generative AI tools, revealed on Thursday that it had spotted and interrupted five online campaigns that used its technology to sway public opinion on political issues.

Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said he hopes AI voice-cloning platforms will tighten security measures and be more proactive about transparency, including publishing a library of audio clips they have created so they can be checked when suspicious audio is spreading online.

He also said lawmakers need to act. The U.S. Congress has not yet passed legislation regulating AI in elections. While the E.U. has passed a wide-ranging artificial intelligence law set to go into effect over the next two years, it does not address voice-cloning tools specifically.

“Lawmakers need to work to ensure there are minimum standards,” Ahmed said. “The threat that disinformation poses to our elections is not just the potential of causing a minor political incident, but making people distrust what they see and hear, full stop.”

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Speaking in the hallway outside a Manhattan courtroom where his criminal hush money trial is taking place, Trump questioned whether student demonstrators who seized and barricaded a campus building early Tuesday, some of them vandalizing it in the process, would be treated the same way as his supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop certification of the presidential results.

“I think I can give you the answer right now,” he said. “And that’s why people have lost faith in our court system.”

Trump’s remarks demonstrate anew how he and the Republican Party have tried to minimize the deadliest assault on the seat of American power in over 200 years, arguing that violent or criminal behavior by the left is a larger threat. Trump has called the rioters “unbelievable patriots” and has talked openly about the prospect of issuing pardons if he wins a second term.

His comments come as he runs to reclaim the White House and is juggling charges in four separate criminal cases. They promote his position that the charges are being orchestrated by Democrats to keep him out of the White House and that he and his supporters are the targets of political persecution by a fundamentally corrupt justice system.

“They took over a building. That is a big deal,” Trump said of the Columbia protesters. “And I wonder if what’s going to happen to them will be anything comparable to what happened to J6, because they’re doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damages, a lot of people getting hurt very badly. I wonder if that’s going to be the same kind of treatment they gave J6. Let’s see how that all works out.”

More than 1,350 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years. According to the Justice Department, 89 have pleaded guilty to federal felony charges of assaulting law enforcement officers.

Legal scholars and political scientists said Trump’s strategy could help his campaign but point out there are stark differences between Jan. 6 and the campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war. College students have gathered in encampments on Columbia and other campuses to call for a ceasefire and demand their universities cut financial ties to Israel.

“The Columbia protests are not aimed at stopping the peaceful transition of power following an election, so they do not threaten the functioning of U.S. democracy,” said Richard Hasen, an expert in election law and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles law school.

“This is a tradition of protest. Disruptive, to be sure. Annoying to university administrators, to be sure,” Jefferson said. “To the contrary, what happened on January the 6th was a violent attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. There is no tradition of that in American history. It is unprecedented. And that is why we should, of course, treat it differently.”

Some of the recent campus protests have erupted into clashes with police, and hundreds of students have been arrested. Protesters in some parts of the country have hurled water bottles or other objects at officers, and police have deployed chemical agents to disperse crowds or carried them away amid screams.

Trump’s remarks build on a strategy of Republicans and conservative social media influencers to reframe what constitutes an insurrection as part of an ongoing attempt to influence the public’s perception of Jan. 6. They have used the term to describe public demonstrations and even the 2020 election that put Democrat Joe Biden in the White House.

Some social media users on Tuesday called the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall an “insurrection,” and said the media wouldn’t describe it that way because the views of the protesters aligned with the political left. Fox News used the reference in an article Tuesday about the student protesters, reporting that “the insurrection began at approximately 12:30 a.m.”

Legal experts say the term “insurrection” has a specific meaning — a violent uprising that targets government authority — and that protests that do not involve an attempt to dismantle or replace a government shouldn’t be classified that way.

Tuesday was the second time in a week that Trump has compared the campus protests to past examples of right-wing violence.

Last week, he claimed the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where torch-wielding white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us” was “nothing” compared to the antisemitism displayed at the campus protests.

“The hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here,” he said.

He returned to the reference in his comment outside court on Tuesday, saying, “Charlottesville is peanuts compared to what you’re looking at now.”

The campus protests have pitted students against one another, and videos show instances of demonstrators making antisemitic remarks and violent threats. Some Jewish students say the hateful rhetoric has made them afraid to set foot on campus.

Meanwhile, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

Columbia University on Tuesday said students occupying Hamilton Hall would face expulsion.

“Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation — vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances — and we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday,” said Ben Chang, the university’s spokesperson.

Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlawed robocalls that contain voices generated by artificial intelligence, a decision that sends a clear message that exploiting the technology to scam people and mislead voters won’t be tolerated.

The unanimous ruling targets robocalls made with AI voice-cloning tools under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a 1991 law restricting junk calls that use artificial and prerecorded voice messages.

The announcement comes as New Hampshire authorities are advancing their investigation into AI-generated robocalls that mimicked President Joe Biden’s voice to discourage people from voting in the state’s first-in-the-nation primary last month.

Effective immediately, the regulation empowers the FCC to fine companies that use AI voices in their calls or block the service providers that carry them. It also opens the door for call recipients to file lawsuits and gives state attorneys general a new mechanism to crack down on violators, according to the FCC.

The agency’s chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, said bad actors have been using AI-generated voices in robocalls to misinform voters, impersonate celebrities and extort family members.

“It seems like something from the far-off future, but this threat is already here,” Rosenworcel told The Associated Press on Wednesday as the commission was considering the regulations. “All of us could be on the receiving end of these faked calls, so that’s why we felt the time to act was now.”

Under the consumer protection law, telemarketers generally cannot use automated dialers or artificial or prerecorded voice messages to call cellphones, and they cannot make such calls to landlines without prior written consent from the call recipient.

The new ruling classifies AI-generated voices in robocalls as “artificial” and thus enforceable by the same standards, the FCC said.

Those who break the law can face steep fines, with a maximum of more than $23,000 per call, the FCC said. The agency has previously used the consumer law to clamp down on robocallers interfering in elections, including imposing a $5 million fine on two conservative hoaxers for falsely warning people in predominantly Black areas that voting by mail could heighten their risk of arrest, debt collection and forced vaccination.

The law also gives call recipients the right to take legal action and potentially recover up to $1,500 in damages for each unwanted call.

Josh Lawson, director of AI and democracy at the Aspen Institute, said even with the FCC’s ruling, voters should prepare themselves for personalized spam to target them by phone, text and social media.

“The true dark hats tend to disregard the stakes and they know what they’re doing is unlawful,” he said. “We have to understand that bad actors are going to continue to rattle the cages and push the limits.”

Kathleen Carley, a Carnegie Mellon professor who specializes in computational disinformation, said that in order to detect AI abuse of voice technology, one needs to be able to clearly identify that the audio was AI generated.

That is possible now, she said, “because the technology for generating these calls has existed for awhile. It’s well understood and it makes standard mistakes. But that technology will get better.”

Sophisticated generative AI tools, from voice-cloning software to image generators, already are in use in elections in the U.S. and around the world.

Last year, as the U.S. presidential race got underway, several campaign advertisements used AI-generated audio or imagery, and some candidates experimented with using AI chatbots to communicate with voters.

Bipartisan efforts in Congress have sought to regulate AI in political campaigns, but no federal legislation has passed, with the general election nine months away.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, who introduced legislation to regulate AI in politics, lauded the FCC for its ruling but said now Congress needs to act.

“I believe Democrats and Republicans can agree that AI-generated content used to deceive people is a bad thing, and we need to work together to help folks have the tools necessary to help discern what’s real and what isn’t,” said Clarke, D-N.Y.

The AI-generated robocalls that sought to influence New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 primary election used a voice similar to Biden’s, employed his often-used phrase, “What a bunch of malarkey” and falsely suggested that voting in the primary would preclude voters from casting a ballot in November.

“New Hampshire had a taste of how AI can be used inappropriately in the election process,” New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said. “It is certainly appropriate to try and get our arms around the use and the enforcement so that we’re not misleading the voting population in a way that could harm our elections.”

The state’s attorney general, John Formella, said Tuesday that investigators had identified the Texas-based Life Corp. and its owner, Walter Monk as the source of the calls, which went to thousands of state residents, mostly registered Democrats. He said the calls were transmitted by another Texas-based company, Lingo Telecom.

According to the FCC, both Lingo Telecom and Life Corp. have been investigated for illegal robocalls in the past.

Lingo Telecom said in a statement Tuesday that it “acted immediately” to help with the investigation into the robocalls impersonating Biden. The company said it “had no involvement whatsoever in the production of the call content.”

A man who answered the business line for Life Corp. declined to comment Thursday.

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Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Washington and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Attorney General John Formella said the recorded message, which was sent to multiple voters on Sunday, appears to be an illegal attempt to disrupt and suppress voting. He said voters “should disregard the contents of this message entirely.”

A recording of the call reviewed by The Associated Press generates a voice similar to Biden’s that includes his often-used phrase, “What a bunch of malarkey.” It then tells the listener to “save your vote for the November election.”

“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” the voice mimicking Biden says. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

It is not true that voting in Tuesday’s primary precludes voters from casting a ballot in November’s general election. Biden is not campaigning in New Hampshire and his name will not appear on Tuesday’s primary ballot after he elevated South Carolina to the lead-off position for the Democratic primaries, but his allies are running a write-in campaign for him in the state.

It’s not known who is behind the calls, though they falsely showed up to recipients as coming from the personal cellphone number of Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic Party chair who helps run Granite for America, a super-PAC supporting the Biden write-in campaign.

Sullivan said she alerted law enforcement and issued a complaint to the attorney general after multiple voters in the state reported receiving the call Sunday night.

“This call links back to my personal cell phone number without my permission,” she said in a statement. “It is outright election interference, and clearly an attempt to harass me and other New Hampshire voters who are planning to write-in Joe Biden on Tuesday.”

It was unclear how many people received the call but a spokesperson for Sullivan said she heard from at least a dozen people who got it Sunday night. The attorney general’s office said anyone who has received the call should email the state Justice Department’s election law unit.

Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement that the campaign is “actively discussing additional actions to take immediately.”

“Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign,” she said.

The apparent attempt at voter suppression using rapidly advancing generative AI technology is one example of what experts warn will make 2024 a year of unprecedented election disinformation around the world.

Generative AI deepfakes already have appeared in campaign ads in the 2024 presidential race, and the technology has been misused to spread misinformation in multiple elections across the globe over the past year, from Slovakia to Indonesia and Taiwan.

“We have been concerned that generative AI would be weaponized in the upcoming election and we are seeing what is surely a sign of things to come,” said Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics at the University of California, Berkeley, who reviewed the call recording and confirmed it is a relatively low-quality AI fake.

Katie Dolan, a spokeswoman for the campaign of Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who is challenging Biden in the Democratic primary, said Phillips’ team was not involved and only found out about the deepfake attempt when a reporter called seeking comment.

“Any effort to discourage voters is disgraceful and an unacceptable affront to democracy,” Dolan said in a statement. “The potential use of AI to manipulate voters is deeply disturbing.”

The Trump campaign said it had nothing to do with the recording but declined further comment.

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The safeguards spelled out by the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup in a blog post this week include a mix of preexisting policies and newer initiatives to prevent the misuse of its wildly popular generative AI tools. They can create novel text and images in seconds but also be weaponized to concoct misleading messages or convincing fake photographs.

The steps will apply specifically to OpenAI, only one player in an expanding universe of companies developing advanced generative AI tools. The company, which announced the moves Monday, said it plans to “continue our platform safety work by elevating accurate voting information, enforcing measured policies, and improving transparency.”

It said it will ban people from using its technology to create chatbots that impersonate real candidates or governments, to misrepresent how voting works or to discourage people from voting. It said that until more research can be done on the persuasive power of its technology, it won’t allow its users to build applications for the purposes of political campaigning or lobbying.

Starting “early this year,” OpenAI said, it will digitally watermark AI images created using its DALL-E image generator. This will permanently mark the content with information about its origin, making it easier to identify whether an image that appears elsewhere on the web was created using the AI tool.

The company also said it is partnering with the National Association of Secretaries of State to steer ChatGPT users who ask logistical questions about voting to accurate information on that group’s nonpartisan website, CanIVote.org.

Mekela Panditharatne, counsel in the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said OpenAI’s plans are a positive step toward combating election misinformation, but it will depend on how they are implemented.

“For example, how exhaustive and comprehensive will the filters be when flagging questions about the election process?” she said. “Will there be items that slip through the cracks?”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E are some of the most powerful generative AI tools to date. But there are many companies with similarly sophisticated technology that don’t have as many election misinformation safeguards in place.

While some social media companies, such as YouTube and Meta, have introduced AI labeling policies, it remains to be seen whether they will be able to consistently catch violators.

“It would be helpful if other generative AI firms adopted similar guidelines so there could be industry-wide enforcement of practical rules,” said Darrell West, senior fellow in the Brooking Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation.

Without voluntary adoption of such policies across the industry, regulating AI-generated disinformation in politics would require legislation. In the U.S., Congress has yet to pass legislation seeking to regulate the industry’s role in politics despite some bipartisan support. Meanwhile, more than a third of U.S. states have passed or introduced bills to address deepfakes in political campaigns as federal legislation stalls.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that even with all of his company’s safeguards in place, his mind is not at ease.

“I think it’s good we have a lot of anxiety and are going to do everything we can to get it as right as we can,” he said during an interview Tuesday at a Bloomberg event during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We’re going to have to watch this incredibly closely this year. Super tight monitoring. Super tight feedback loop.”

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

“I never read ‘Mein Kampf,’” Trump said at a campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa, referencing Adolf Hitler’s fascist manifesto.

Immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Trump said Tuesday, are “destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country.”

In the speech to more than 1,000 supporters from a podium flanked by Christmas trees in red MAGA hats, Trump responded to mounting criticism about his anti-immigrant “blood” purity rhetoric over the weekend. Several politicians and extremism experts have noted his language echoed writings from Hitler about the “purity” of Aryan blood, which underpinned Nazi Germany’s systematic murder of millions of Jews and other “undesirables” before and during World War II.

As illegal border crossings surge, topping 10,000 some days in December, Trump continued to blast Biden for allowing migrants to “pour into our country.” He alleged, without offering evidence, that they bring crime and potentially disease with them.

“They come from Africa, they come from Asia, they come from South America,” he said, lamenting what he said was a “border catastrophe.”

Trump made no mention of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday to disqualify him from the state’s ballot under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause, though his campaign blasted out a fundraising email about it during his speech.

The former president has long used inflammatory language about immigrants coming to the U.S., dating back to his campaign launch in 2015, when he said immigrants from Mexico are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”

But Trump has espoused increasingly authoritarian messages in his third campaign, vowing to renew and add to his effort to bar citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries, and to expand “ ideological screening ” for people immigrating to the U.S. He said he would be a dictator on “day one” only, in order to close the border and increase drilling.

In Waterloo on Tuesday, Trump’s supporters in the crowd said his border policies were effective and necessary, even if he doesn’t always say the right thing.

“I don’t know if he says the right words all of the time,” said 63-year-old Marylee Geist, adding that just because “you’re not fortunate enough to be born in this country,” doesn’t mean “you don’t get to come here.”

“But it should all be done legally,” she added.

It’s about the volume of border crossings and national security, said her husband, John Geist, 68.

“America is the land of opportunity, however, the influx — it needs to be kept to a certain level,” he said. “The amount of undocumented immigrants that come through and you don’t know what you’re getting, things aren’t regulated properly.”

Alex Litterer and her dad, Tom, of Charles City said they were concerned about migrants crossing the southern border, especially because the U.S. doesn’t have the resources to support that influx. But the 22-year-old said she didn’t agree with Trump’s comments, adding that immigrants who come to the country legally contribute to the country’s character and bring different perspectives.

Polling shows most Americans agree, with two-thirds saying the country’s diverse population makes the U.S. stronger.

But Trump’s “blood” purity message might resonate with some voters.

About a third of Americans overall worry that more immigration is causing U.S.-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence, according to a late 2021 poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Jackie Malecek, 50, of Waterloo said she likes Trump for the reasons that many people don’t — how outspoken he is and “that he’s a little bit of a loose cannon.” But she thought Trump saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood” took it a little too far.

“I’m very much for cutting off what’s happening at the border now. There’s too many people pouring in here right now, I watch it every single day,” Malecek said. “But that wording is not what I would have chosen to say.”

Malecek supports allowing legal immigration and accepting refugees, but she is concerned about the waves of migrants crossing the border who are not being vetted.

Sen. JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio, lashed out at a reporter asking about Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comments, defending them as a reference to overdoses from fentanyl smuggled over the border.

“You just framed your question implicitly assuming that Donald Trump is talking about Adolf Hitler. It’s absurd,” Vance said. “It is obvious that he was talking about the very clear fact that the blood of Americans is being poisoned by a drug epidemic.”

At a congressional hearing July 12, James Mandryck, a Customs and Border Protection deputy assistant commissioner, said 73% of fentanyl seizures at the border since the previous October were smuggling attempts carried out by U.S. citizens, with the rest being done by Mexican citizens.

Extremism experts say Trump’s rhetoric resembles the language that white supremacist shooters have used to justify mass killings.

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, pointed to the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooter and the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooter, who he said used similar language in writings before their attacks.

“Call it what it is,” said Lewis. “This is fascism. This is white supremacy. This is dehumanizing language that would not be out of place in a white supremacist Signal or Telegram chat.”

Asked about Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comments, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell replied with a quip about his own wife, an immigrant, who was an appointee in Trump’s administration.

“Well, it strikes me that didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao Secretary of Transportation,” McConnell said.

Trump currently leads other candidates, by far, in polls of likely Republican voters in Iowa and nationwide. Trump’s campaign is hoping for a knockout performance in the caucuses that will deny his rivals momentum and allow him to quickly lock up the nomination. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has staked his campaign on Iowa, raising expectations for him there.

“I will not guarantee it,” Trump said of winning Iowa next month, “but I pretty much guarantee it.”

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This story has been corrected to change a reference to this year’s Texas mall shooting to the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting.

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Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Republicans attacked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday as the longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist launched an independent bid for the White House, reflecting growing concerns on the right that the former Democrat now threatens to take votes from former President Donald Trump in 2024.

The Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign both took aim at Kennedy’s liberal background while national Democrats stayed silent as Kennedy insisted in a speech in Philadelphia that he was leaving both political parties behind.

“Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement. He labeled Kennedy’s campaign “nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family’s name.”

The fiery response exposes the unknowns that lie in Kennedy’s long-anticipated decision to run as an independent. The move is likely to impact the 2024 race, which appears to be heading toward a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden, but it’s still unclear exactly how.

Kennedy, a member of one of the most famous families in Democratic politics, was running a long-shot primary bid and holds better favorability ratings among Republicans than Democrats. Even Trump just two weeks ago said of Kennedy, “I like him a lot. I’ve known him for a long time.”

Allies of both Biden and Trump have at times questioned whether Kennedy would be a spoiler against their candidate.

“The truth is, they’re both right,” Kennedy said onstage Monday to roaring applause. “My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”

Speaking Monday from Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, where America’s founding documents were adopted, Kennedy made it clear he didn’t want to be affiliated with either party. He referenced a “rising tide of discontent” in the country. He said he wants to make a “new declaration of independence” — from corporations, the media and the two major political parties.

Hundreds of supporters who gathered for Kennedy’s remarks, holding signs that read “Declare your independence” and at times chanting “RFK, all the way!” were upbeat about his decision. An eclectic mix of disillusioned Democrats, Trump voters looking for a change, and political outsiders who say their ideas don’t square with any one party, they insisted that Kennedy could unify them all.

“He’s going to win,” said Peter Pantazis, a 40-year-old business owner from Lewes, Delaware. “I’ve been praying that he’s going to decentralize the campaign, get away from the party system and actually be the candidate of the people for the people. And that’s what he announced today.”

“The last couple years I’ve been noticing the Republican Party’s been going a way I didn’t like,” said Brent Snyder, a disabled veteran from south Philadelphia. “Not that I agree with everything that’s happening to Trump, but I think right now he has more baggage than his country needs. The division right now is just terrible. We need someone to bring both sides together to make us work.”

Joy, hope and the faint smell of marijuana hovered above the crowd as Kennedy spoke of John Adams’ unwavering support for his country and George Washington’s prescient warning that partisan politics would result in corruption.

Yet Kennedy’s upstart campaign has a long way to go to compete with the funding, support and experience that the Trump and Biden campaigns enjoy. His announcement Monday was delayed briefly when he arrived onstage only to find his speech was loaded upside-down in the teleprompter.

Monday’s announcement comes less than a week after the progressive activist Cornel West abandoned his Green Party bid in favor of an independent White House run. Meanwhile, the centrist group No Labels is actively securing ballot access for a yet-to-be-named candidate.

Aware of the risk that Kennedy could pull votes away from Republicans, Trump allies have begun circulating opposition research against Kennedy designed to damage his standing among would-be conservative supporters.

The Republican National Committee published a fact sheet before Kennedy’s speech titled “Radical DEMOCRAT RFK Jr.” that lists times he supported liberal politicians or ideas. The document also listed times he supported conspiracy theories about COVID-19 or “stolen-election claims” related to the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections that Democrats lost to President George W. Bush. Trump continues to promote the disproved theory that his loss to Biden was the result of a stolen election.

Biden’s allies so far have dismissed Kennedy’s primary campaign as unserious. Asked for comment ahead of the announcement, a Democratic National Committee spokesman responded with an eye roll emoji. The DNC declined to comment Monday.

Four of Kennedy’s eight surviving siblings put out a joint statement denouncing his candidacy and saying his announcement saddened them.

“The decision of our brother Bobby to run as a third party candidate against Joe Biden is dangerous to our country,” it read. “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment.”

Tony Lyons, co-founder and co-chairman of American Values 2024, the super PAC supporting Kennedy, dismissed those comments as “part of a strategy to discredit him.”

“At his family dinner tables they would disagree about everything, and that’s what democracy looks like,” Lyons said. “Families are allowed to disagree.”

While Kennedy has long identified as a Democrat and frequently invokes his late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle President John F. Kennedy on the campaign trail, he has built close relationships with far-right figures in recent years. He appeared on a channel run by the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and headlined a stop on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist road show put together by Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Polls show far more Republicans than Democrats have a favorable opinion of Kennedy. He also has gained support from some far-right conservatives for his fringe views, including his vocal distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which studies have shown are safe and effective against severe disease and death.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle Smith, and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.