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Wait so judging by the tone I thought this was some sort of accusation that the government was being weaponized in an unethical way but it's actually... think-tanks, advocacy groups, and Democratic party organs variously coming up with counter-arguments to Trump actions pre-emptively? That doesn't sound so strange or bad or unusual. The only actual officials cited in this piece are like, elected state AGs, where grandstanding partisan lawsuits are basically half the job, and who have electoral accountability, and a governor doing regular governor things. All presidents from both parties tend to do last-second executive actions that they try to make at least a little hard to undo. Everything else in the article is just action by non-governmental orgs.
So partisan people are doing partisan things on their own free time. Is that supposed to worry a regular citizen somehow? By contrast, some of these rumored Trump actions are far, far worse in that they use and abuse actual government vehicles in arguably unethical and dangerous ways. In other words, to use your words, "political obstruction and shaping efforts" are in my view, and the view of many others, only extra bad/super concerning if they are done by the government in a way that betrays principles of democracy, fairness, ethics, etc. Done by others, on their own time, it's just politics.
Let's examine the original claim, helpfully via the quote (bolded for ease of identification) in full context:
The key phrase here in my opinion is actually: to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. Outside groups, individuals, and parties seeking to steer and influence media coverage is a normal election-time activity. Controlling information flow sounds more sinister, but in practice having re-read the original article on 2020, this was basically just being extra annoying to social media companies. Anyone can do this. It's not like, great, but it's fine in the sense that it's an equalish playing field. That's part of what makes it not so bad, even if not ideal. And a lot of the claims were overstated anyways. The article for example credited a "public information campaign" for setting up Fox to call Arizona for Biden earlier than others. This is actually a bizarre claim. The fact is that Fox's analytics setup was far more advanced than other news orgs, and were indeed correct about their call, and it didn't have much to do with a pressure campaign for or against, though certainly the call was controversial for some afterword. And this claim doesn't match up with any of the facts I'm aware of, based on reporting about the call itself as well as Fox's subsequent tone in reporting about election results and certification. Later, when it came to pressuring election boards, the manner of pressure also matters. Bribes, quid-pro-quo offers by other government officials, things like that are super bad. Some of these things were actually alleged to have been done by Trump and people around him, which is again, super bad. Contrast this: the article gave an example of a "successful" pressure tactic, which was a bunch of people showing up in chat to a streamed election board decision, and spamming hashtags. That's totally within-bounds.
I'm far more worried about the government putting their finger on the scale and abusing their power than the corporate media landscape. Because ultimately it is indeed the government that makes the rules and NOT the media. I think it's really critical to draw a distinction.
Edit: added a pair of examples from the article
The MAGA brigade is likely to try to perform outright election interference and (accidental) information warfare, employing tricks more on the incompetence end of the scale. That level of election security needs little additional reinforcement, though keeping it in mind certainly will be valuable just to enforce existing laws. Trump was stupid enough to try and intimidate Raffensperger, and there will certainly be other stupid stunts like false electors or disputes gumming up the tally. Nevertheless, something smells off about the calculated impact these activists had in 'protecting the election' against evil MAGA. The creaking machine of elections is slow to act and therefore slow to change, and the attempts by Trumps minions/cultists to effect change have been met by lazy people unwilling to jump through hoops more than by dedicated activists influencing the real world. This is where the difference between 'protecting the 2020 election' and 'resisting trump 2: the trumpening' comes about: the deliberate stated attempt in the NYtimes article is to set up a concerted effort to not just lawfare existing structures against Trump, but create new laws and resistances in advance to stop even downballot initiatives. A split ticket could leave Trump out of the Oval yet leave state senators or governors in Democratic hands or vice versa, and the net effect will be a tangled mess too convoluted to easily untangle and too easy to activate.
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