New York Times: “In 2016, before the presidential election, state-backed Russian operatives exploited Facebook and Twitter to sway voters in the United States with divisive messages. Now, weeks before from the midterm elections on Nov. 6, such influence campaigns are increasingly a domestic phenomenon fomented by Americans on the left and the right.”

“Politics has always involved shadings of the truth via whisper campaigns, direct-mail operations and negative ads bordering on untrue. What is different this time is how domestic sites are directly emulating the Russian playbook of 2016 by aggressively creating networks of Facebook pages and accounts — many of them fake — that make it appear as if the ideas they are promoting enjoy widespread popularity, researchers said. The activity is also happening on Twitter.”

Washington Post: “Facebook said on Thursday it has purged more than 800 U.S publishers and accounts for flooding users with politically-oriented content that violated the company’s spam policies, a move that could reignite accusations of political censorship.”

Rep. Tom Reed’s (R-NY) campaign placed an electronic tracking device inside the lawmaker’s campaign signs, which was used to track down a sign allegedly stolen by a liberal activist, the Ithaca Journal reports.

“If I was a millennial, I’d delete everything I said and did online. Jon Ossoff forgot to do that.”

— Congressional Leadership Fund executive director Corry Bliss, quoted by Politico, on millennial candidates.

Jonathan Chait: “Odds are, you don’t remember any of the particular revelations contained in the stolen emails from John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee. But when WikiLeaks published them two years ago, they created a furor. The snippets of conversation, wrenched out of context, seemed to supply hidden evidence of what Hillary Clinton’s critics on both the left and the right already suspected. Here was Clinton scheming, using crass political logic and language, deriding Bernie Sanders, and acknowledging her weaknesses.”

“The email hacks did not actually reveal anything nearly so incriminating. What the episode showed was that, if hostile actors are allowed to peek into a vast trove of their target’s private thoughts, they can usually find something that sounds shady. This is exactly the method Republicans are now using to discredit the FBI.”

“Even the strongest of Trump backers should think long and hard about a world without facts and common truths,” Axios reports.

“You might love his middle finger to the media. But even the strongest of Trump backers should think long and hard about a world without facts and common truths. His techniques — especially claiming bad or unwanted news is ‘fake news’ — are getting copied worldwide, just as evil actors like Russia are getting better at spreading misinformation.”

“Despots use fake news as a weapon: Leaders or state media in at least 15 countries have used the term ‘fake news’ to try to quell dissent or defuse questions about human rights violations.”

“In the U.S.: Within seconds of any major attack or shooting, fake news (real fake news: news that is actually false) starts circulating about the suspect and victims, forcing tech platforms to apologize for surfacing news from faulty sources — think Vegas shooting, Times Square subway bombing, etc.”

McClatchy: “The GOP’s controversial dual effort to revamp the health care system and tax code has convinced Democrats they should bluntly assail Republicans as the defenders of out-of-touch plutocrats, a message party operatives have already begun to poll-test, include in attacks ads, and use against vulnerable incumbents even before Saturday’s passage of the Senate GOP bill.”

“And rather than wince at the inevitable retorts that the party is trying to instigate a class war, leading party strategists say they welcome the attack — confident the GOP’s legislative priorities make them a more likely culprit in the public’s mind.”

“Republicans say doubling down on investigating Hillary Clinton is a smart strategy in the coming months as the cloud from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation looms over the White House,” The Hill reports.

“Even though Clinton does not hold public office anymore, they say she remains the one person who can rally the Republican base and unify a splintered party constantly bickering with itself. And the Republicans making this pitch aren’t just the Breitbart News crowd.”

Said GOP strategist Susan Del Percio: “It may not be the best policy strategy, it certainly is a good political strategy. When it comes to the president, he must always have an enemy to punch at. It’s actually a pretty safe strategy.”