Learn English – Why is the sentence “Statistics ‘is’ often misleading” incorrect

What probably happened is that the piece was edited and a crucial antecedent — what the "It" that begins the first sentence of the second paragraph referenced — got removed because an editor thought it was material that could be cut for length. Something on the order of

... Millions of Americans fear that the bill abolishes their rights to due process.

It does indeed ...

would have tied everything together nicely.

The big problem with journalism moving from print to the Web, as I see it, is that the cycles are so fast that normal editing suffers and copy-editing is virtually non-existent.

Neither sounds good, but "those" is more natural.

You are asking about which demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those) most appropriately mean "the aforementioned." It's hard to specify a rule that answers the question generally. But I would say you only use "these" when you want to emphasize that you mean specifically the aforementioned photos, and NOT some other ones. In other cases, default to those.

I know you said that changing the text was not an option, but it sounds terrible as it is. Just for the record, I would rewrite it as:

I’ve posted 5 photos on my timeline. Have you seen them? You’ll love them! They were taken in France.

When it's phrased like this, the these/those confusion is irrelevant. Also, reusing the word "photos" multiple times, as is done in the original, makes the text feel stilted and robotic.