‘Meta owes us an explanation,’ group says as organizers fear censorship after account goes dark for several hours

The coalition leaders behind nationwide pro-democracy protests that have drawn millions of Americans to the streets in recent years were frustrated when its Instagram account was temporarily shut down during its latest demonstration on Saturday.

The No Kings movement’s account went dark for several hours while protests focused on increasing early voter turnout were underway, sparking censorship fears.

From the attorney general stumping for Republican candidates to federal agents raiding the home of a Democratic congresswoman up for re-election, the department is violating longstanding norms

Donald Trump’s justice department has aggressively inserted itself into the midterm elections in the contest’s final weeks, shattering the department’s longstanding practice of political neutrality and leaving little doubt about the department’s willingness to help should the president attempt to subvert elections where his party is forecasted to lose seats and ultimately control of Congress.

In the last few weeks, federal agents have raided the home of a Democratic congresswoman up for re-election. It has touted criminal charges and arrests of non-citizens charged with voter fraud. The attorney general has hit the campaign trail to stump for Republican candidates. And the department gave California election officials 48 hours to investigate the citizenship of 20,000 people, and then sued the state when it refused to comply. The FBI also recently published a video criticizing Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and other Democrats, drawing an immediate rebuke from one watchdog, who said the video “has no place in a democratic society”.

The Republican state attorney general appears uniquely ill-chosen as a candidate – but he is a political survivor who could yet frustrate Democratic dreams

Depending how you look at the situation, it is either predictable that Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general and Republican candidate for US Senate, is struggling in the polls – or impressive that he is not doing worse. Beloved by hardcore Maga voters and regarded with skepticism by the broader voting public, Paxton is also puzzlingly bland. Recently, Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that the 63-year-old Paxton “may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen”. The president was endorsing him.

Yet it is Paxton’s ability to attract – and somehow scrape through – scandal that makes him a less charismatic, perhaps, but still kindred spirit of “Teflon Don”: nothing sticks. He has survived state prosecution (on securities-related charges that he settled without admitting guilt), impeachment by the Republican-led Texas legislature (on abuse-of-office charges of which he was later acquitted), and so many controversies that it can be difficult to pin down the most outrageous.