In Northern California, a typical meeting of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors used to run around two or three hours.

This is a scam, dammit. It's a plant, dammit. It's a damn dammit. We're sick of it.

Now it's sometimes closer to six hours.

It's a fraud. The numbers of PCR testing.

Shasta County is rural, mostly white, and very Republican.

People there are angry about the local coronavirus response.

Some claim that rules to enforce social distancing could lead to civil war and violent resistance.

And many of these beliefs are fueled by false conspiracy theories that people found online.

There's no constructive criticism. It's just trying to disrupt the meeting and disrupt county business.

County Supervisor Leonard Motie worries that reasonable people won't feel safe coming to meetings, let alone running for public office.

The extremists aren't the majority at this point, so business can still be done, but it's much more difficult.

In some parts of the country, the threats against public health workers have gotten so bad that officials are resigning.

And the disinformation is not only about the pandemic. It's also about things like voting.

In many places, those conspiracy theories are actually leading to some big policy changes.

A controversial election bill clears another hurdle at the state capital. It would add voting restrictions to upcoming elections.

Republicans in Georgia are pushing a new law that would make it harder to vote in a bunch of ways.

Less early voting, a shorter absentee voting window, a new ID requirement.

And all of this comes as Donald Trump repeats false claims that he only lost the state because of election fraud.

Lies that he repeated this week.

At least 40 states are considering similar bills. In Georgia, Andre Gillespie of Emory University says the voting bill would disproportionately hurt lower income voters, people of color and Democrats.

What does it mean when you see legislators responding with legislators and policy proposals that would be aimed to address a problem that in fact it exists in the first place?

Consider this. Disinformation has moved from far corners of the internet into mainstream politics.

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