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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter, reacting to growing concern about misinformation spread on social media, is banning all political advertising from its service. Its move strikes a sharp contrast with Facebook, which continues to defend running paid political ads, even false ones, as a free speech priority.

“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Wednesday in a series of tweets announcing the new policy.

Facebook has taken fire since it reiterated in September that it will not fact-check ads by politicians or their campaigns, which could allow them to lie freely. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress in October that politicians have the right to free speech on Facebook.

Zuckerberg wasted no time responding to Twitter’s move. During Facebook’s conference call for earnings, which began less than an hour after Dorsey’s tweet, the Facebook chief offered an impassioned monologue about what he called his company’s deep belief “that political speech is important.”

Zuckerberg stood by the company’s decision to run unchecked political ads and denied that the choice is financially motivated, saying such ads make up less than half of a percent of Facebook revenue.

Facebook’s recent $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations was more than 10 times what it makes from political ads, he said.

“This is complex stuff. Anyone who says the answer is simple hasn’t thought about the nuances and downstream challenges,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can say that we are not doing what we believe or we haven’t thought hard about these issues.”

Google did not have an immediate comment on Twitter’s policy change.

Trump’s campaign manager called Twitter’s change a “very dumb decision” in a statement Wednesday.

“This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said.

The presidential campaign for former Vice President Joe Biden said it was “unfortunate” that companies would think the only option was to completely ban political ads.

“When faced with a choice between ad dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging that, for once, revenue did not win out,” Bill Russo, the deputy communications director for Biden’s campaign said in a statement.

Political advertising makes up a small sliver of Twitter’s overall revenue. The company does not break out specific figures each quarter, but said political ad spending for the 2018 midterm election was less than $3 million. It reported $824 million in third-quarter revenue.

Candidates spend significantly more purchasing ads on Facebook than on Twitter, company records show.

The issue suddenly arose in September when Twitter, along with Facebook and Google, refused to remove a misleading video ad from President Donald Trump’s campaign that targeted Biden.

In response, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another presidential hopeful, ran her own ad on Facebook taking aim at Zuckerberg. The ad falsely claimed that Zuckerberg endorsed President Donald Trump for re-election, acknowledging the deliberate falsehood as necessary to make a point.

Critics have called on Facebook to ban all political ads. These include CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who recently called the company’s policy of allowing lies “absolutely ludicrous” and advised the social media giant to sit out the 2020 election until it can figure out something better.

Misleading political ads on social media played a major role in Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 presidential election.

Dorsey said the company is recognizing that advertising on social media offers an unfair level of targeting compared to other mediums. It is not about free expression, he asserted.

“This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle,” he tweeted. “It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”

Twitter currently only allows certified campaigns and organizations to run political ads for candidates and issues. The latter tend to advocate on broader issues such as climate change, abortion rights and immigration.

The company said it will make some exceptions, such as allowing ads that encourage voter turnout. It will describe those in a detailed policy it plans to release on Nov. 15.

It will also still allow politicians to freely tweet their thoughts and opinions, which can then be shared and spread. Trump’s Twitter feed in particular is known for his often bombastic and controversial tweets that are shared widely.

Matt Shupe, a Republican political strategist whose public relations firm has won awards for its use of ads on Facebook, called Twitter’s decision “incredibly dumb.” He said there’s no reason to eliminate all political advertising just to stop the relatively small number of bogus or misleading ads.

“You can’t abolish television advertising because cigarette makers bought ads once,” he said.

The decision will hurt political challengers the most, Shupe said, as they don’t have the name recognition or wide reach of incumbents and need ads to get their message out.

“If you’re a challenger, advertising allows you to make up that difference,” he said. “It’s very hard to organically grow an audience for a state assemblyman campaign.”

Ethan Porter, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, echoed the concerns and called Twitter’s decision disappointing. He said it will deprive voters of one way to learn about those standing for election.

“That loss of information about candidates in an election — I don’t think that should be taken lightly,” he said. “Voters should know who the candidates in an election are and twitter is an important platform.”

Twitter said in June that political figures and world leaders who tweet abusive or threatening messages might get slapped with a warning label, but the tweets would remain on the site. Twitter has not yet used this warning label.

Federal campaigns are expected to spend the majority of advertising dollars on broadcast and cable channels during the 2020 election, according to advertising research firm Kantar, and about 20% of the total $6 billion in spending on digital ads.

Twitter’s policy will start on Nov. 22.

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AP reporters David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island, Amanda Seitz in Chicago, Will Weissert in Washington, Mae Anderson in Atlanta and Tali Arbel in New York contributed to this article.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s top adviser for Russian and European affairs is leaving his job at the White House, a day before he’s scheduled to testify before the House impeachment investigators, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Tim Morrison owes his job at the National Security Council to Trump, but his testimony Thursday in the House impeachment inquiry might be central to a push to remove the president from office.

A senior administration official said Morrison “has decided to pursue other opportunities.” The official, who was not authorized to discuss Morrison’s job and spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Morrison has been considering leaving the administration for “some time.”

Morrison has been in the spotlight since August when a government whistleblower said multiple U.S. officials had said Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

Now it’s his turn in the impeachment probe’s hot seat.

Morrison, tall and lean with an authoritative voice, will be asked to explain that “sinking feeling” he got when Trump demanded that Ukraine’s president investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and meddling in the 2016 election.

Morrison, who is in his 40s, is a political appointee in the Trump White House, brought on board by former national security adviser John Bolton to address arms control matters and later shifted into his current role as a top Russia and Europe adviser. It was there that he stepped into the thick of an in-house squabble about the activities of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney who had been conversing with Ukrainian leaders outside of traditional U.S. diplomatic circles.

Known as a “hawk” in national security circles, Morrison is set to be the first political appointee from the White House to testify before impeachment investigators. The probe has been denounced by the president, who has directed his staff not to testify.

Regardless of what he says, GOP lawmakers will be hard-pressed to dismiss Morrison, formerly a longtime Republican staffer at the House Armed Services Committee. He’s been bouncing around Washington in Republican positions for two decades, having worked for Rep. Mark Kennedy, R-Minn., Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and as a GOP senior staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, including nearly four years when it was chaired by Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas.

Morrison’s name appeared more than a dozen times in earlier testimony by William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, who told impeachment investigators that Trump was withholding military aid unless the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, went public with a promise to investigate Trump’s political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Taylor’s testimony contradicts Trump’s repeated denials that there was any quid pro quo.

Taylor said Morrison recounted a conversation that Gordon Sondland, America’s ambassador to the European Union, had with a top aide to Zelenskiy named Andriy Yermak. Taylor said Morrison told him security assistance would not materialize until Zelenskiy committed to investigate Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that once employed Biden’s son. A White House meeting for Zelenskiy also was in play.

“I was alarmed by what Mr. Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak conversation,” Taylor testified. “This was the first time I had heard that the security assistance — not just the White House meeting — was conditioned on the investigations.”

Taylor testified that Morrison told him he had a “sinking feeling” after learning about a Sept. 7 conversation Sondland had with Trump.

“According to Mr. Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a quid pro quo,” Taylor testified. “But President Trump did insist that President Zelenskiy go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelenskiy should want to do this himself. Mr. Morrison said that he told Ambassador Bolton and the NSC lawyers of this phone call between President Trump and Ambassador Sondland.”

Morrison told people after Bolton was forced out of his job that the national security adviser had tried to stop Giuliani’s diplomatic dealings with Ukraine and that Morrison agreed, according to a U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss Morrison’s role in the impeachment inquiry and spoke only on condition of anonymity. The official said Morrison told people that with the appointment of Robert O’Brien as Bolton’s successor, his own future work at the NSC was in a “holding pattern.”

Bolton had brought Morrison into the NSC in July 2018 as senior director for weapons of mass destruction and biodefence. He’s known as an arms control expert or an arms treaty saboteur, depending on who you ask.

Morrison, who earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota and a law degree from George Washington University, keeps nuclear strategist Herman Kahn’s seminal volume on thermonuclear warfare on a table in his office.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Bolton and Morrison are likeminded. Kimball said both have been known for calling up GOP congressional offices warning them against saying anything about arms control that didn’t align with their views.

“Just as John Bolton reportedly did, I would be shocked if Morrison did not regard Giuliani’s activities as being out of bounds,” said Kimball, who has been on opposite sides of arms control debates with Morrison for more than a decade.

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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The general who oversaw the U.S. raid on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi provided the most detailed account yet of the operation and said the U.S. is on alert for possible “retribution attacks” by extremists.

Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said al-Baghdadi’s remains were buried at sea within 24 hours of his death inside an underground tunnel where he fled as special operations soldiers closed in on him.

The Pentagon on Wednesday released the first government photos and video clips of the nighttime operation, including one showing Delta Force commandos approaching the walls of the compound in which al-Baghdadi and others were found.

Another video showed American airstrikes on other militants who fired at helicopters carrying soldiers to the compound. The U.S. also bombed the compound after the soldiers completed the mission so that it would not stand as a shrine to al-Baghdadi.

“It looks pretty much like a parking lot with large potholes right now,” McKenzie said.

The attacking American force launched from an undisclosed location inside Syria for the one-hour helicopter ride to the compound, McKenzie said.

Two children died with al-Baghdadi when he detonated a bomb vest, McKenzie said, adding that this was one fewer than originally reported. He said the children appeared to be under the age of 12. Eleven other children were escorted from the site unharmed. Four women and two men who were wearing suicide vests and refused to surrender inside the compound were killed, McKenzie said.

The general said the military dog that was injured during the raid is a four-year veteran with U.S. Special Operations Command and had been on approximately 50 combat missions.

The dog was injured when it came in contact with exposed live electrical cables in the tunnel after al-Baghdadi detonated his vest, but it has returned to duty, McKenzie said. The dog, named Conan, will leave the Middle East and visit the White House next week, President Donald Trump tweeted.

Al-Baghdadi was identified by comparing his DNA to a sample collected in 2004 by U.S. forces in Iraq, where he had been detained.

The U.S. managed to collect “substantial” amounts of documentation and electronics during the raid, McKenzie said, but he would not elaborate. Such efforts are a standard feature of raids against high-level extremist targets and can be useful in learning more about the group’s plans.

Although the raid was successful, McKenzie said it would be a mistake to conclude that the Islamic State has been defeated.

“It will take them some time to re-establish someone to lead the organization, and during that period of time their actions may be a little bit disjointed,” the general said. “They will be dangerous. We suspect they will try some form of retribution attack, and we are postured and prepared for that.”

In outlining the operation, McKenzie said al-Baghdadi had been at the compound in Syria’s northwest Idlib province for “a considerable period,” but he was not specific.

He said the raid was briefed to Trump on Friday, and McKenzie made the decision to go ahead on Saturday morning.

McKenzie offered no new details about al-Baghdadi’s final moments.

“He crawled into a hole with two small children and blew himself up while his people stayed on the grounds,” he said when asked by a reporter about al-Baghdadi’s last moments and Trump’s description of the Islamic State leader as “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way” to his death.

Other senior Pentagon officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said they could not confirm Trump’s description.

Several times this month, Trump has said he is withdrawing from Syria and that the troops are “coming home.” But, in fact, the U.S. military remains in the country, shifting positions and gearing up to execute Trump’s order to secure Syria’s oil fields — not for the Syrian government but for the Kurds. Trump also has said he wants to “keep” the oil, although it’s unclear what he means.

Earlier Wednesday, the acting homeland security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, told a congressional hearing that U.S. security agencies have been reminded of the potential for al-Baghdadi’s death to inspire his followers to launch an attack “in the immediate aftermath.”

Russell Travers, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the same hearing that he does not believe al-Baghdadi’s death will have “much impact” on the organization.

“If there were significant attacks that were in the planning, that planning will continue. It won’t have that much effect,” Travers aid.

Within Syria and Iraq, he added, IS has at least 14,000 fighters.

“That’s an important number,” he said. “Because five, six years ago, when ISIS was at its low point, they were down under a thousand. To us, this tells us the insurgency has a lot of options.”

FBI Director Chris Wray said the biggest concern in the United States was the “virtual caliphate” that inspires Americans to pledge allegiance to IS and commit acts of violence in the group’s name even without traveling to Syria.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he worries that despite al-Baghdadi’s death, the conditions in Syria “are ripe for ISIS to reconstitute.”

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Associated Press Writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.