Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday released a plan to fight disinformation to hold tech companies accountable for their actions in light of the 2016 election.

“Disinformation and online foreign interference erode our democracy, and Donald Trump has invited both,” Warren said in a Tweet Wednesday. “Anyone who seeks to challenge and defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election must be fully prepared to take this on – and I’ve got a plan to do it.”

Warren proposed to combat disinformation by holding big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google responsible for spreading misinformation designed to suppress voters from turning out.

“I will push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating this kind of information, which has the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote,” Warren said in a press release.

There is a political unit below a ward—a district. But for tax and election purposes nothing can be divided smaller than a ward. Every four years registered voters of each district elect two committee persons for their party. The committee persons from those districts (two Democrats and two Republicans from each) make up their “ward committee.” In total, there are 66 ward committees, and they vote amongst themselves to elect 66 “ward leaders.”

Ward leaders (Democrat and Republican) are the 66 big fish in the smallest ponds of the city government. And voters get to elect them. Yay!

Indirectly, that is.

Wha? Indirectly? Like the Electoral College?

Um, like the Electoral College, but with even less accountability. Yay!

See, ward committee persons are tasked with electing a ward leader, but it’s easy for incumbent ward leaders to become entrenched. Here’s why: Ward leaders are in charge of endorsing candidates for election. This includes not only presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional candidates, but committee candidates too.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — The last time Senator Elizabeth Warren trundled across Iowa in a specially decorated campaign vehicle, an R.V. headed to the Iowa State Fair in August, it was wrapped with a cheeky play on the slogan for her sweeping agenda: “Honk if you’re ready for big, structural change!”

Now, with days before the Iowa caucuses, her bus is plastered with a far more direct and urgent message, as she looks to quell the skepticism that has slowed her momentum here in the crucial final stretch. “Courage over cynicism” it urges on one side; “hope over fear” it says on the other.

Such is the reality of her political comedown from the swaggering heights of the summer and early fall, when she was thought to be the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party’s left flank and the chief rival to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. These days, it is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who is the liberal topping some Iowa polls and the top rival to Mr. Biden. Ms. Warren, of Massachusetts, along with Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., is battling to depart Des Moines next week with a mandate as a serious contender, leaning on a political organization she began building here earlier than her rivals.

She and her team have only a few days left to achieve, if not a win in Iowa, then a surprisingly strong finish that gives her momentum heading into New Hampshire. The campaign has said it is in the race for the long haul, warning in a memo last week against “breathless media narratives” that take hold as voting begins. The memo, written by Ms. Warren’s campaign manager, Roger Lau, touted a 1,000-strong staff spread across the country, including in the Super Tuesday states that vote in March. Still, the team now finds itself in the slightly surreal position of working flat out with no real sense of what 12 months of campaigning in Iowa will yield them.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed nine additional progressive Congressional lawmakers and candidates on Wednesday.

The endorsements for the nine progressive House contenders cover a string of races across the country, from New York to Texas to California. None are in particularly tight races, and most of the endorsees have backed Sanders’ presidential bid.

The nine Democrats endorsed by Sanders are: Jessica Cisneros of Texas, Georgette Gómez of Texas and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ro Khanna (Calif.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Peter Welch (Vt.).

Sanders had previously announced his endorsements for Cori Bush in Missouri and Mari Newman in Illinois.

“This is the most important election in our lifetime and I’m proud there are so many candidates running for Congress who understand that real change comes from the bottom on up, not the top on down,” Sanders said in a statement. “They’re all strong advocates for real change and together we will build a movement to transform this nation so that it works for all our people.”