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☆ Billions of political text messages were sent last year — and there’s little to stop more from coming
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Alex Ford | Alex Ford Is An Interactive Journalist At Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

More than 15 billion political texts were sent in 2022 according to call-blocking service Robokiller — about 50 messages for every phone in the country. Political texts spiked last fall during the run-up to November’s midterm election. Republican campaigns and groups sent the bulk of political texts sent in 2022, Robokiller’s data shows. Even if they don’t recall consenting to political texts, voters have limited options for revoking it. Political texts are not subject to the federal Do Not Call registry, which allows consumers to opt out of telemarketing calls and text messages.

Widespread protests against the Chinese government’s “zero-Covid” restrictions may have rocked the country over the weekend, but data shows that anger has been building for months. Protests also flared up in June — right after the financial hub of Shanghai completed a grueling two-month lockdown — and in September and October. China’s zero-Covid strategy aims to isolate individual cases and cut off transmission chains through a combination of quarantine, contact tracing, mass testing and strict lockdowns. According to an Oxford University government response tracker, China’s lockdowns have remained at early-pandemic levels, while the U.S. and remaining Group of 7 nations have relaxed their measures. The lockdowns are having a major impact on the Chinese economy, the world’s second largest after the United States.

NBC News is tracking the votes remaining in states with key Senate races on election night. Use this page to see which counties in key states have the most ballots yet to be counted, along with which party is currently leading in that county. GeorgiaIn Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is in a competitive race against Republican challenger Herschel Walker. John Fetterman is in a close race against Republican Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. The race is too close to call.

HONG KONG — Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to obtain a historic third term in power as the twice-a-decade congress of his ruling Chinese Communist Party wraps up this weekend. Since Xi took power in 2012, the country's GDP has more than doubled, from $8.53 trillion to $17.73 trillion. Much of that growth was based on manufacturing, turning China into the world’s second-largest economy after the United States since 2010. The government attributes 100 million of them to Xi, who made poverty alleviation one of his signature initiatives. Last February, he proclaimed that he had eliminated extreme poverty altogether, though experts have questioned how China defines it.

Cases have now been recorded in every state, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 44 states and Washington, D.C., at the end of July and from 14 states and Washington, D.C., at the beginning of June. In total, the U.S. has reported more than 24,000 cases since the beginning of May. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency in July. In the last three weeks, California, Illinois and New York state have issued emergency declarations over the continued spread of monkeypox.

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