News Information and Media Site: The year disinformation broke us

THE BIG STORY

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to fully restore DACA

It's the rare full-circle moment regarding a news story. In 2017, at the outset of Donald Trump's term, his administration began its efforts to end the Deferred Action On Childhood Arrivals program, which shields undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Now, at the conclusion of Trump's term, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to begin accepting new applications for the program.

The order restores DACA, which the Trump administration has been attempting to dismantle for years. In June, the Supreme Court ruled against the government and said the administration violated federal law when it rescinded DACA.

After the administration lost at the Supreme Court, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf issued a memo in July stating new applications would not be accepted, and renewals would only be granted for one year instead of two.

Friday's court order overturned that memo.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

Trump's desperate effort to overturn the election is running out of time

A month into the Trump campaign's efforts to challenge the election results — and dozens of failed legal challenges later — Republicans have not persuaded any judge to invalidate a significant number of ballots.

Trump continued to promote baseless allegations that the election was tainted by fraud. The campaign even filed another round of legal challenges in Wisconsin on Thursday.

But here's the thing: Trump's own lawyers have acknowledged that they're up against a narrowing window. Dec. 8 is a key date in the federal election timeline, and it will make it even harder for Trump and his supporters to convince any court to take dramatic steps that would upend Biden's victory.

SNAPSHOTS

ICE is trying to force BuzzFeed News to divulge its sources. The agency's investigators issued a subpoena demanding we identify our sources — an extraordinary attempt to interfere with a news outlet acting under the protections of the First Amendment.

An Ohio sheriff's deputy fatally shot a 23-year-old Black man outside his home. Ohio authorities and the victim's family provided conflicting accounts of how and why 23-year-old Casey Goodson Jr. was shot and killed as he was entering his home.

Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for COVID-19. The president announced that his personal lawyer tested positive in a tweet. In recent days, Giuliani has been maskless at hours-long hearings as part of Trump's baseless efforts to undermine the results of the election.

Republican Senators say it's not their job to actually tell people that Biden won the election. Republicans are waiting on Trump voters to come around to the reality that Biden will be president. But to some, half the country rejecting election results may just be a new normal.

We still don't know the full extent of how this wave of the coronavirus is impacting people of color. Inadequate information about the rates of COVID-19 in populations of color has prevented health agencies from targeting their response before it's too late.

This fired worker said Amazon retaliated against her. Now the company is facing charges. One of half-dozen Amazon employees fired following worker protests during the height of the coronavirus pandemic will get a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board.

THAT WAS 2020

In 2020, disinformation broke us

A tide of disinformation that has been rising for years reached its highest peak yet in 2020. This year has seen a global pandemic, historic protests and a contentious election colliding to make for a perfect storm of disinformation — what Jane Lytvynenko calls "the year of the infodemic."

Lytvynenko strings together major disinformation moments of 2020 to illuminate how bad actors exploited the failures of tech platforms to spread false information and undermine institutions. His diagnosis of the future isn't bright, either:

"Disinformation is not going away. It will dissuade people from taking the vaccine. Protesters will be lied about as police brutalize them. And the propaganda machine Trump fueled won't grind to a halt just because there's a new president."

A SHOW OF GRATITUDE

This class thanked their teacher in the cutest way on Zoom

It's no surprise that this year has been tough on teachers as they tried to adjust to a new virtual reality.

Last week, Adam Shrager taught his last statistics class of the semester at the College of New Jersey. He logged on to find all of the cameras turned off, a sea of blank screens.

Then all at once each student's camera turned on and each one was holding up a sign thanking Shrager for being such an awesome teacher. The signs have messages like, "You are in the 99th percentile of my all-time favorite professors."

The lovely, touching moment went viral on TikTok, with millions expressing their love and gratitude.

I hope courage comes easy today,

Elamin

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