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Did FBI’s Censorship Liaison Hide Colleagues’ Connection to the Hunter Biden Scandal?

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 04, 2023

guy in FBI jacket talking on the phone — A close analysis of the *Missouri v. Biden* court filings suggests the FBI is not being forthright in identifying the players involved

MARGOT CLEVELAND

Evidence is mounting that both the Biden campaign and the federal government interfered in the 2020 election by running an info op to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Missouri and Louisiana have unearthed some of the most damning evidence in their First Amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration, but a close analysis of the court filings suggests the FBI is not being forthright in identifying the players involved.

As part of the lawsuit Missouri and Louisiana’s attorneys general initiated, the states obtained limited initial discovery. Among other things, the plaintiffs obtained a list of government officials who communicated with Twitter about so-called content moderation and the deposition testimony of Elvis Chan, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco Cyber Branch.

In his deposition, Chan testified that he is one of the “primary” FBI agents who communicates with social media companies about so-called disinformation. During the 2020 election cycle, Chan coordinated meetings between the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and at least seven of the major tech giants, including Meta/Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube, Yahoo!/Verizon Media, and Microsoft/LinkedIn. Those meetings occurred at first quarterly and then monthly and weekly as the election neared.

In questioning Chan, attorneys representing Missouri and Louisiana pushed him on several points related to the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop. The lawyers succeeded in eliciting testimony from Chan that the FBI regularly raised the possibility of “hack and dump” operations with senior officials at the various tech companies. Those discussions included the FBI warning the companies of a potential hack-and-leak occurring shortly before the 2020 election, like the Democratic National Committee hack and WikiLeaks that occurred in 2016.

The plaintiffs also quizzed Chan on the names of any government officials who discussed “hack-and-dump Russian operations” with the tech giants. Chan mentioned Section Chief Laura Dehmlow, “among others.” But Chan then danced around who those others were, saying he couldn’t recollect. Chan eventually identified four FBI officials that attended Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) meetings at which the FBI discussed the risk of hack-and-leak operations. These officials were Brady Olson, William Cone, Judy Chock, and Luke Giannini.

Regarding whether anyone within the FBI suggested Chan should raise the possibility of Russian hack-and-dump operations with the tech giants in 2020, Chan repeatedly said he could “not recall,” but at one point acknowledged, “They may have, but I don’t recollect at this time.”

The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden claim Chan’s “I do not recall,” is not credible. They say it is “facially implausible that Chan does not recall whether other federal officials discussed warning platforms about ‘hack-and-leak’ operations during 2020, especially after the fiasco of censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.” Furthermore, the plaintiffs added, “the only aspect of [Chan’s] internal discussions with the FBI about hack-and-leak operations that he does not recall is whether someone from the FBI suggested or directed him to raise the issue with social-media platforms.”

Uncovering whether someone — and if so, who — directed Chan or other FBI agents to warn tech companies about a potential hack-and-leak operation is necessary to unravel the extent of the government’s info ops. Did FBI agents with knowledge of either the Hunter Biden laptop or the existence of damaging communications possessed by other governments, such as Ukraine or China, prompt Chan and others to warn of an impending hack-and-leak to protect the Biden family from any fallout?

Chan also appeared less than forthcoming when questioned about whether he had discussed the 2020 election with any of the people involved in the DNC hack. Here, an unnoticed tidbit from Chan’s deposition proves interesting: Chan testified that he served as the supervisor for the Russian cyber squad that investigated the DNC server before the San Francisco office handed it off to FBI headquarters.

When asked whether “subsequent to the 2016 investigation of the hack of the DNC server,” he had “any communications with anyone involved in that investigation about the possibility that a hack-and-leak operation” could happen prior to the 2020 election, Chan initially provided a misleading response, saying he did “not remember discussing the potential for a 2020 election with any of the FBI personnel because they had moved on to different roles.”

Catching Chan’s narrowing of the question from “anyone” to “FBI personnel,” the plaintiffs’ attorney quickly queried, “and people outside the FBI?” Chan then noted he would have discussed national security cyber investigations involving Russian matters with Sean Newell, a deputy chief at the DOJ National Security Division who also worked on the DNC hack. But Chan refused to say whether Newell or anyone else who worked on the DNC hack had raised the issue of a 2020 hack-and-release repeat.

Chan’s reticence raises red flags. But piecing together two exhibits filed in the Missouri v. Biden case reveals a thread to pull to start getting some answers.

Exhibit 23 used during Chan’s deposition includes a series of emails related to the DNC hack that were filed in the special counsel’s criminal prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. In addition to Chan and Newell, the emails include names of about another dozen government agents.

When those names are cross-checked against the names of the federal officials with whom Twitter “had meetings or discussions” about so-called content moderation issues — a list Twitter provided the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden in response to a third-party subpoena — two names overlap: Chan and Jonathan Sills.

Sills, an attorney with the FBI’s Office of General Counsel, appeared in several emails in which Sussmann and the FBI discussed logistical details for conveying a copy of the DNC server data to the FBI. Given Sills was only added to the email threads when they discussed whether the FBI would pay CrowdStrike to make a copy of the data, it seems unlikely Sills had a broader involvement in the DNC hack-and-release investigation.

But why then was Sills communicating with Twitter about so-called content moderation issues? Was it about payments to Twitter? Or something else?

Recall we still don’t know the identities of the “folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations,” as then-Twitter legal executive Stacia Cardille complained in a Nov. 3, 2020, email to Jim Baker, the then-deputy general counsel for Twitter. “This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” Cardille noted.

Remember also that the FBI’s Baltimore field office provided coverage to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office out of which the Hunter Biden investigation was being run — to the extent FBI headquarters allowed.

When reached by phone in his D.C. office, Sills told The Federalist he was not authorized to comment on the matter, which is unfortunate because the people who can comment seem not to recollect the most pertinent points. A follow-up email to Sills went unanswered.

Eventually, though, these threads will all be pulled when discovery occurs in Missouri v. Biden. While some will lead nowhere, as the initial discovery proves, there is much to learn about the government’s involvement in the Hunter Biden info ops and its role in censoring speech on social media.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Biden White House Hounded Facebook to Censor Tucker Carlson, New Emails Show

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | JANUARY 10, 2023

Tucker Carlson giving a speech at Turning Point USA event — **The Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor Fox News host Tucker Carlson for criticizing the Covid shots, according to newly released White House emails.**

SHAWN FLEETWOOD

VISIT ON TWITTER@SHAWNFLEETWOOD

President Joe Biden’s administration actively pressured Facebook to censor Fox News host Tucker Carlson for criticizing the Covid shots, according to internal White House communication records obtained by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana.

In an email dated April 14, 2021, then-senior adviser to the president’s Covid response team, Andrew Slavitt, voiced dissatisfaction to a Facebook official that a video of Carlson questioning the left’s universal demand that people get the Covid jab was “Number one” on the platform, to which said official responded that they’d look into the matter. Later that same day, the Facebook representative informed the White House that while the “Tucker Carlson video does not qualify for removal under [Facebook’s] policies,” the company would label the clip with “a pointer to more authoritative COVID information” and work to limit its reach on the platform.

Facebook’s efforts did not meet the administration’s demands for greater censorship, however. In response to the representative, White House Director of Digital Strategy Robert Flaherty questioned how Carlson’s video didn’t violate Facebook’s existing policies and pressured the company to turn over information on the efficacy of its censorship practices.

“How was this not violative? The second half of the segment is raising conspiracy theories about the government hiding that all vaccines aren’t effective,” Flaherty claimed. “Moreover, you say reduced and demoted. What does that mean? There’s 40,000 shares on the video. Who is seeing it now? How many? How effective is that?”

“Not for nothing but last time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection,” Flaherty added in an apparent reference to the platform’s handling of claims pertaining to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and subsequent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But the Biden White House’s habit of using Big Tech to silence dissenting voices on Covid-related information didn’t just stop at Carlson. A separate batch of emails released by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general reveals a concentrated endeavor between the administration and Facebook to reduce the “virality of vaccine hesitancy content,” even if such posts contained factually accurate information.

“As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation,” a Facebook representative told Slavitt in a March 21, 2021, email. “This is often-true content, which we allow at the post level … but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking. We’ll remove these Groups, Pages, and Accounts when they are disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content.”

In addition to Facebook, Twitter was also a major player in the collusion efforts between the federal government and Big Tech to further squash free speech online. In an email dated August 11, 2022, Flaherty admonished Twitter for allowing posts contradicting White House claims to circulate on the platform, writing that “if your product is appending misinformation to our tweets[,] that seems like a pretty fundamental issue.”

Flaherty separately accused Twitter in a December 2021 email of “Total Calvinball” and “bending over backwards” to tolerate disfavored speech after the company refused to comply with demands from the administration to censor a video.

“This case is about the Biden Administration’s blatant disregard for the First Amendment and its collusion with social media companies [to] suppress speech it disagrees with,” said Missouri AG Andrew Bailey in a statement. “I will always fight back against unelected bureaucrats who seek to indoctrinate the people of this state by violating our constitutional right to free and open debate.”

The bombshell emails come as a result of an investigation launched last year by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and then-Missouri AG and now-U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt to uncover collusion efforts between the federal government and Big Tech companies to censor Covid-related posts they deemed misinformation. In addition to obtaining communication records unveiling such corruption, the investigation has scored numerous legal wins allowing Louisiana and Missouri to depose high-ranking administration officials such as Anthony Fauci under oath about their role in these efforts.

According to a transcript of Fauci’s November testimony, the man claiming to “represent science” somehow couldn’t recall relevant information about his role in the federal government’s disastrous Covid response “at least 174 times.” The deposition ranged from topics such as Fauci’s bid to smear authors of “The Great Barrington Declaration,” to his role in attempting to “discredit any theory” that Covid resulted from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.

Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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David French: Yes, The Dispatch Takes Money to Help Leftists Keep the Internet Conservatism-Free

BY: JORDAN BOYD | DECEMBER 19, 2022

David French, the “principled conservative” who argued drag queen story hours in libraries are “blessings of liberty,” publicly confirmed last week that he’s personally advised Big Tech platforms on how to suppress the speech of people who disagree with leftists.

“A few years ago I was invited to an off-the-record meeting with senior executives at a major social media company,” reads the Atlantic contributor and Dispatch senior editor’s first sentence. In 2020, The Dispatch became a paid censor to help Facebook suppress conservative ideas using the pretense of “factchecking.”

As a Facebook censor, The Dispatch has helped suppress true information in the service of leftist conversation control. This has included keeping accurate pro-life ads off Facebook in a way that protected the candidacy of Joe Biden and restricted nonviolent political speech. Dispatch CEO Steve Hayes also defended Facebook’s 2020 election interference in the form of throttling a true story about Hunter Biden’s corruption that may financially benefit his father.

Facebook launched its third-party fact-checking program in 2016. By 2020, more than 50 publications including French’s The Dispatch agreed to do Big Tech’s dirty censorship work. Throttlers like The Dispatch are tasked by Facebook “reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more reliable information to users.”

The Dispatch claims to be a center-right media organization. It called for Donald Trump’s impeachment, a position opposed by the vast majority of Republican voters.

The pro-life advertisements The Dispatch blocked highlighted the abortion-until-birth positions of 2020 Democrats, including Joe Biden. At the time, the NeverTrump website claimed the ads included “partly false information.”

“Biden has not expressed support for late-term abortions—which, while not being a medical term, generally refers to abortions performed at 21 weeks or later. And neither candidate has voiced support for abortion ‘up to the moment of birth,’” the false Dispatch fact-check stated.

Shortly after The Federalist published an article amplifying the censorship, The Dispatch claimed that the fact check, which remained up on social media for three days before deletion, was still in “draft form” and was published in “error.”

That didn’t stop The Dispatch from continuing to take money to shut up conservatives and conservative causes. For their willingness to participate in Big Tech’s anti-free speech crusade, these suppressors are paid from Facebook’s more than $100 million “fact-checking” investment.

Publications like The Dispatch are not ashamed of their partnership with Facebook. In fact, there is clear indication on both The Dispatch and Facebook’s websites that they are proud to be advancing the goal of silencing anyone they deem problematic together.

Similarly, French is not ashamed of his partnership with Big Tech. If his writing indicates anything, French, the man infamous for performative outrage about the moral failures of Republicans like former President Donald Trump, basks in his role as a censor who can shut dissidents up with the click of a mouse.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

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6 Huge Takeaways from the Sixth Dump Of ‘Twitter Files’

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | DECEMBER 19, 2022

hand holding smartphone with social media icons — **While the ‘Twitter Files’ confirm many previously known facts and reveal some new details, they also raise more questions.**

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

Part 6 of the “Twitter Files” broke late Friday when independent journalist Matt Taibbi published a 40-something-tweet thread titled: “TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY.” Here are six highlights from the latest drop of internal communications bandied back and forth between Twitter executives and government officials.

1. The FBI Was the Hand in Twitter’s Glove

“Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary of the FBI,” Taibbi opened his “Twitter Files” thread from Friday. Then over the course of some 45 tweets, Taibbi provided proof from internal communications of the tech giant to support his claim and what Taibbi dubbed both the “master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter” and a “unique one-big-happy-family vibe” between Twitter and the FBI.

For instance, the “Twitter Files” revealed that from “January 2020 to November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety Chief Yoel Roth.” And the emails and other communications showed “agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.” “What stands out,” Taibbi stressed, “is the sheer quantity of reports from the government.”

Twitter’s relationship was not limited to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, nor were communications limited to emails, Friday’s installment of the “Twitter Files” revealed. A Sept. 15, 2020 email from a then-legal executive at Twitter, Stacia Cardille, to Jim Baker, who served at the time as deputy general counsel, confirmed these points. The email, titled “Elections Work,” summarized Cardille’s elections-related work and opened by discussing “Government-Industry Sync.”

“I participated in our monthly (soon to be weekly) 90-minute meeting with FBI, DOJ, DHS, ODNI, and industry peers on election threats.” Cardille then noted several items of import — more on those later. Key here, however, is the revelation that Twitter and “industry peers” had monthly and “soon to be weekly” meetings with the “FBI, DOJ, DHS, and ODNI,” or Office of the Director of National Intelligence, showing Twitter was not the only tech company groomed by the feds to spy on and censor Americans, and that it wasn’t merely the FBI involved.

So maybe “hands-in-gloves” is a more apt descriptor.

2. Bloated FBI Task Force Pushed for Silly Censorship

While Cardille’s email to Baker cast Twitter’s relationship with the FBI and other federal organizations as related to “election threats,” the emails exchanged between the feds and Twitter reveal the government regularly pushed Twitter to target select accounts for posts far removed from any semblance of an election threat. Or, as Taibbi reported, “a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.”

For instance, in one Nov. 10, 2022 email, “Fred” wrote, “Hello Twitter contacts,” “FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.” Four Twitter account names followed, which were all suspended, including “one account whose tweets are almost all jokes,” but the latest of which Twitter considered “civic misinformation.”

Taibbi provided several more examples of the FBI alerting Twitter to accounts that the FBI believed were violating Twitter’s terms of service. Taibbi then provided screen grabs of the offensive accounts while stating that “many of the above accounts were satirical in nature,” and nearly all were “relatively low engagement.”

The FBI’s targeting of such “low engagement” accounts seems strange until you realized the FBI greatly expanded the number of agents assigned to its “social media-focused task force, known as FTIF,” created following the 2016 election. The task force “swelled to 80 agents,” Taibbi noted, before making a profound point: “The ubiquity of the 2016 Russian interference story as stated pretext for building out the censorship machine can’t be overstated. It’s analogous to how 9/11 inspired the expansion of the security state.”

3. Feds Thread the Constitutional Needle — or Try To

While Friday’s drop of the “Twitter Files” revealed the FBI and other federal agencies pushing Twitter to censor users, and Twitter acted as if the “ask” was a “tell,” the communications also show that the agents carefully crafted their requests to avoid triggering the Constitution.

Here it is necessary to understand the current state of First Amendment jurisprudence, which holds that when the government seeks the private censorship of speech, “what matters is the distinction between attempts to convince and attempts to coerce,” and “a public-official defendant who threatens to employ coercive state power to stifle protected speech violates a plaintiff’s First Amendment rights.” Conversely, a mere request does not trigger the Constitution.

Notice, then, the care the FBI used in its communications with Twitter: The FBI focused not on the government’s interest in censoring the speech, but on the Twitter accounts the FBI said it believed were “violating your terms of service.” The agents used the same or similar boilerplate language in the emails Taibbi published on Friday. Those same emails also ended with the caveat that the information provided by the FBI is “for any action or inaction deem[ed] appropriate within Twitter policy.”

An email from the FBI’s National Election Command Post to the San Francisco field office also parrots the key language necessary to avoid triggering the Constitution. Specifically, the FBI’s national election group asked the San Francisco field office to assist in coordinating efforts with Twitter to obtain “any location information associated with the accounts that Twitter will voluntarily provide to aid the FBI in assigning any follow-up deemed necessary to the appropriate FBI field office.” The same email makes clear the FBI would use the necessary “legal process” to obtain access to account-holders’ information.

For all the screaming about the First Amendment, then, and the declaration by many that the “Twitter Files” prove the FBI violated Americans’ constitutional rights by seeking the censorship of speech, these exchanges show the FBI attempting to thread the needle to avoid making Twitter a state actor.

Whether the FBI and Twitter succeeded in these efforts, however, remains to be seen because, as one of the country’s most preeminent First Amendment scholars Eugene Volokh explained in his essay “When Government Urges Private Entities to Restrict Others’ Speech,” there may be “room for courts to shift to a model where the government’s mere encouragement of private speech restrictions is enough to constitute a First Amendment violation on the government’s part.”

4. Are Feds Playing Fast and Loose with Classified Info?

The FBI’s efforts to maintain separation between itself and Twitter to avoid triggering the Constitution apparently didn’t prevent the federal government from sharing classified information. The Sept. 15, 2020 email from Cardille to Baker revealed this concerning detail.

“I explicitly asked if there were any impediments with the ability of the government to share classified information or other relevant information with industry,” Cardille wrote about her most recent “monthly (soon to be weekly) 90-minute meeting with FBI, DOJ, DHS, ODNI, and industry peers on election threads.” The “FBI was adamant that no impediments to information sharing exist,” Cardille told Twitter’s then-deputy general counsel.

How could that be? Do the FBI and other intelligence agencies ignore classification designations when working with the tech industry? Or is the supposed intel the FBI is feeding to the social media giants with the goal of censoring private speech so mundane it isn’t classified? Both scenarios are troubling, just for different reasons.

5. The FBI Outsources Its ‘Misinformation’ Flagging

Another important revelation from part six of the “Twitter Files,” Taibbi concisely punctuated thusly: “What most people think of as the ‘deep state’ is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.”

This conclusion followed from Taibbi’s review of communications received by Twitter via its “Partner Support Portal,” which the Center for Internet Security created. The Center for Internet Security, according to Taibbi’s reporting, is a non-governmental organization that serves as a DHS contractor. The Center for Internet Security “describes itself as ‘partners’ with the Cyber and Internet Security Agency (CISA) at the DHS.”

When the Center for Internet Security receives complaints related to supposed election “misinformation,” it says it will “forward it to our partners,” which in addition to the DHS’s Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency, includes the “Election Integrity Partnership at Stanford University.” In turn, according to the “Twitter Files,” the Stanford University project will report “misinformation” to Twitter.

Taibbi provided an example in which Stanford flagged as misinformation a video it called “legal-heavy.” Then to support the idea that the video represented misinformation, the Center for Internet Security’s analysis of the legal issues was quoted at length. What was unclear from the exchange, however, was whether the Center for Internet Security accurately represented the content of the video or properly analyzed the law, as well as whether the video included other accurate points.

That Twitter would be willing to censor someone’s “legally heavy speech,” based on the say-so of various private third parties, may not implicate the First Amendment, but it is a dangerous squelching of free speech that prevents the public from learning and assessing conflicting viewpoints.

6. Some Very Suspicious Timing

A final and more isolated point from Friday’s Twitter dump concerns an email Taibbi highlighted because it showed the multiple channels Twitter and the FBI used to communicate. In the email Taibbi highlighted, San Francisco Special Agent Elvis Chan wrote to Roth and Cardille to “be on the lookout for a Teleporter message from me with two documents to download.” But that email is suggestive beyond the relevance noted because of the date and the suggestion that the message is significant.

Chan’s email to the high-level Twitter executives was dated Oct. 16, 2020, and began, “Twitter folks, I just got something hot off the presses today” — something apparently so important that Chan directed Roth and Cardille to monitor their Teleporter messages.

Now what could those two documents “hot off the presses” concern? Well, the FBI agent’s email to the Twitter executives came a mere two days after the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story on Oct. 14, 2020, raising real suspicions that the two documents related to that scandal.

And so, while the “Twitter Files” confirm many previously known facts and reveal some new details, they also raise more questions.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Leftists Call Free Speech ‘Violence’ To Mute Critics of Barbaric Transgender Surgeries for Kids

BY: CHAD FELIX GREENE | DECEMBER 16, 2022

van outside Boston Children's Hospital — **We simply cannot allow the left to keep bullying critics of their agenda by accusing us of causing violence.**

CHAD FELIX GREENE

VISIT ON TWITTER@CHADFELIXG

The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy organization, has targeted conservative commentator Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire; the person who runs the Libs of TikTok Twitter account; and Seth Dillon, CEO of the satire site The Babylon Bee, accusing them of causing violence in a new report titled “Online Harassment, Offline Violence.”

The report argues, “Anti-equality, online extremists are leading a proactive and coordinated campaign of hate against hospitals and medical providers who offer gender-affirming care for transgender, non-binary and questioning youth.”

The report states it consists of “an informal exploration across Facebook and Twitter” that identifies “24 different hospitals and providers, across 21 states, who were directly attacked online following harassing, inflammatory and misleading posts from Libs of TikTok, Matt Walsh, and other right-wing accounts.”

Relying on misleading allegations of “lies” and “misinformation,” the report draws a line of causation from Libs of TikTok posting a video from a particular hospital detailing its own practices to inevitable online outrage resulting in angry tweets, emails, and phone calls from individuals, causing the hospital to stop youth-oriented transgender advocacy and/or practices and ultimately resulting in legislative efforts to ban the practices in the first place. The report gives examples of hospitals and doctors receiving hostile or angry communications, threats, and specifically, the false bomb threats against Boston Children’s Hospital.

The report insists, “What occurred in Boston is just one example of coordinated campaigns of hate, violence, and harassment being waged both online and offline against health care providers and children’s hospitals simply for providing age-appropriate, best practice, medically necessary medical care to transgender youth.” However, its claim of offline violence remains abstract and assumed. It provides no examples of actual violence.

Accusations of Hate Speech

Detailing what it argues is a coordinated campaign to target pro-LGBT organizations, the report notes: “hate speech accounts such as Libs of TikTok or Matt Walsh, a known transphobe at the alt-right news site The Daily Wire, post an inflammatory message full of disinformation about gender affirming care and call out a specific hospital or doctor by name.” The alleged campaign continues with “right-wing politicians looking to rile up the most extreme members of their base join in spreading the same transphobic rhetoric from their platforms, in some cases going so far as to introduce legislation to regulate children’s hospitals and gender affirming care providers.”

The final “stage” of these campaigns involves hospitals discontinuing transition practices for minors or legislative efforts that heavily regulate or ban said practices. The report concludes by placing responsibility on social media companies, arguing, “Social media companies have a responsibility to act and to not be bystanders while angry mobs intimidate LGBTQ+ people and our allies into silence.” Continuing, “Without intervention from social media companies, this will just lead to more hate speech, more threats, and more violence.”

Again, without citing any actual examples of violence, the report’s implication is that all negative interactions, from tweets to illegal activity like bomb threats, are essentially equal. The report’s authors then go further by arguing direct causation between the posting of information and the dangerous response. Their conclusion is that authorities must prevent or punish those posting the original information, which allegedly “caused” the violence.

Attempt to Silence Criticism

While obviously any form of violence or threats against an individual or organization is wrong and should be handled by the authorities, the popular left-wing argument that responsibility falls to commentators is absurd — even more so as the targets of their anger quite literally share the information left-wing activists post themselves. What the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBT activists stubbornly refuse to consider is that the outrage and anger are perfectly justifiable. Despite activists’ best efforts, many people reasonably view transgender surgeries on minors as barbaric and destructive.

What these organizations are attempting to do is stigmatize anyone who participates in such criticism by accusing them of contributing to any potential violence that may occur. More to the point, they want to intimidate conservative commentators to prevent them from discussing or sharing provocative LGBT activism, often in their own words, in a way that will result in criticism or outrage. So convinced they are morally justified, they view the natural result of the public viewing this information with outrage and legislative pushback as inherently violent and hateful.

In truth, what we see is the very nature of the democracy they champion in action. A children’s hospital boasts of performing elective double-mastectomies on teenagers as young as 15, as the Boston Children’s Hospital does on its website, and the public is rationally outraged. They express their outrage to the hospital and to their elected representatives, who introduce legislation. The left typically champions public protest and the targeting of organizations with phone calls, tweets, and emails when they disagree with a policy or product decision. Such action only appears to become “violence” and “hate” when the left supports what an organization is doing.

In terms of “causing” things like fake bomb threats or threatening voicemails, the idea that illegal behavior from one individual is the fault of a completely unrelated individual is dangerous and irrational. Libs of TikTok sharing a video produced by a children’s hospital is not a direct link to an unstable person calling in a bomb threat later on. Only the person making the call is responsible. Whatever motivated them to do so is entirely within their control. We simply cannot allow the left to continue bullying critics of their agenda by accusing us of causing violence by doing so.

Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of “Surviving Gender: My Journey Through Gender Dysphoria,” and is a social writer focusing on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals, and true equality under the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg.

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The Twitter Files Illustrate How Intelligence Agencies Can Rig Politics

BY: JOY PULLMANN | DECEMBER 14, 2022

Twitter icon close-up on black phone screen — **Perhaps the most important outcome of these releases is the broadening recognition that Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al., are part of government propaganda operations.**

JOY PULLMANN

VISIT ON TWITTER@JOYPULLMANN

It’s not clear whether Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is hostile.

Musk could be motivated by deeply personal reasons to battle Big Tech’s enforcement of Marxist identity politics. Or he could be attempting to do damage control for the regime by duping people who have reason to distrust the regime into believing Twitter is now more trustworthy. There are many other possibilities, too, and it’s impossible for outsiders to know which is true.

After all, the Twitter Files haven’t so far released that much new information. We already knew Big Tech was colluding with federal officials to deny Americans free speech and therefore self-government. We already knew the internet’s dominant infrastructure is completely rigged. We already knew Donald Trump’s Twitter defenestration was based on Twitter employees’ personal animus against him, not any objective reading of company policy.

We already knew Joe Biden is likely owned by foreign oligarchs who pay his son Hunter for access and influence, and that the Hunter Biden laptop story’s suppression was a deep state influence operation that tipped the 2020 election.

Whatever is going on behind the release of the Twitter Files, good things can come of it. This wormhole likely goes very deep, and even what we’re seeing now, quite close to the surface, is alarming and indicative enough. Perhaps the most important outcome of these releases is the broadening recognition that Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al., are part of government propaganda operations.

This is very likely why we’ve been hearing increasing alarms about “protecting democracy.” The existence and prevalence of this chant online is itself a strong indicator that democracy, or the concept of self-rule through free and fair elections, as the basic bloke thinks of it, doesn’t really exist anymore. At least, that’s certainly the case if Big Tech, in collusion with unelected officials who are almost as far-left as Twitter’s employees, selects what information voters may receive.

Twitter censorship directly or indirectly is what led to the horrendously regressive COVID policies, Biden's presidential victory, and why we got the record inflation, energy, crime, illegal immigration and Fentanyl crises.
We are here today because of what Twitter did.
— Rising serpent 🇺🇸 (@rising_serpent) December 13, 2022

This Twitter-capade reveals further details about Big Tech’s function as an arm of U.S. “national security” and “intelligence” agencies. Decades ago, these agencies started going rogue on the formerly inalienable constitutional rights of American citizens, with tacit acquiescence from Congress through repeat authorizations and increased funding. These agencies and the entities they’ve colonized now treat the American people like occupied foreign territory, subject to psychological manipulation and institutional infiltration in a manner reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Party.

In fact, this whole affair emits more than merely a whiff of totalitarian collectivism, both communist and fascist. For one thing, the Twitter Files details about the revolving door between U.S. intelligence agency employees and Twitter — and surely also Google and Facebook — recall that Germany’s infamous National Socialists embedded party operatives on “private” company boards. So does today’s Chinese Communist Party.

One must also consider the possibility, if not absolute likelihood, that many of these “former” U.S. military and intelligence agents working at Twitter and Co. are not actually former, but covert government agents. I hear the practice is called “sheep dipping.” Former Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker certainly fits that description. So does Vijaya Gadde.

Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @BariWeiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask “Jim’s” last name, the answer came back: “Jim Baker.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 6, 2022

It’s also noteworthy that a number of these types, including Baker and big fat lying former CIA Director John Brennan, seem to be laundered through CNN and MSNBC stints as “security analysts.” I.e. to use TV to spread regime-desired disinformation, such as to help quash the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.

"…multiple episodes suggesting that Twitter had been penetrated by foreign intelligence agencies and/or was complicit in threats to democratic governance" pic.twitter.com/6Nm4ds0rtk
— Matt Beebe (@TheMattBeebe) December 11, 2022

So, twitter employees were working with the FBI and foreign intelligence. And the higher ups were warned and were totally cool with it to the point they fired the whistle blower to silence the story. Just amazing. https://t.co/FxUsK8wajF
— The Dank Silent Knight, Holy Knight 🎄🦇 (@capeandcowell) December 12, 2022

This use of spycraft against American citizens seems to be an increasingly recurring and increasingly visible aspect of our post-2016 dystopia. Recall that it appears to have been a feature of the Jan. 6, 2021 “insurrection,” the 2020 Michigan tyrant “kidnapping” false flag operation, the Spygate operation, the attempted FBI entrapment of Sen. Ron Johnson, and many more.

While the vast majority of Americans don’t use Twitter, it has a massive, outsized influence on every American’s everyday life. We saw that in real-time with the consent spiral manufactured, possibly by national security agencies, to impose unprecedented lockdowns in 2020.

Twitter has a fraction of the users of every other major online network, yet it controls the political conversation because of who uses it and how they use it. It’s helpful, even if not literally true, to think of Twitter as an influence operation targeted at Congress, the executive agencies, the corporate media that control the ruling Democrat Party, and other members of the ruling class. That’s who its users overwhelmingly are, especially the most active.

Twitter is where people go to link up to the woke hive mind. That’s why it’s poison to everyone, but especially Republican officeholders.

This is why Republican politicians make some of their stupidest decisions when framed by what they see on Twitter, because the Twitter “consensus” reflects the opposite of their constituents’ views. (This disconnect is a major reason The Federalist exists.) It’s simply a pressure tool for the leftist mob. That’s also why big business leaders are idiots to respond to Twitter mobs — the majority of their customers don’t pay any attention to Twitter.

This information asymmetry has been highly destructive to the American republic but highly useful to the nefarious actors who run our deeply corrupt federal agencies. For one thing, it has allowed the veiled imposition of a vast information iron curtain across Western countries where many people believe themselves to be free citizens. Twitter is the tip of the spear for this growing censorship regime now consisting of a shadowy web between federal officials, social media-sponsored “fact checking” censorship hacks, Big Tech, corporate media, intelligence agencies, and who knows what other entities.

Twitter has been the typical initiator of bans on a person, organization, idea, or conversation from an online voice — and sometimes from basic life necessities such as banking. Then Facebook, Apple, Google, and others follow suit. The other colluding entities get Twitter to do the heavy lifting of canceling a dissenting person, political movement, conversation, or idea, then just file behind and copy Twitter so they avoid blowback.

We now have more evidence to add to the growing pile establishing that Twitter wasn’t just functioning this way because almost all of its employees were far-left Democrat activists. It also has been rigging public conversation, and therefore public life and elections themselves, at the behest of elected and unelected Democrats using their public positions for deeply partisan gain.

The Biden administration admitted it was flagging specific posts for Twitter to take down. It called for Big Tech to inflict “consequences” on those who disagreed with Democrats, and attempted to publicly formalize its evisceration of this vital tool of democracy — free speech — with a “Disinformation Governance Board.” The Biden administration’s national security apparatus openly declared that anyone who doesn’t agree with Democrat politicians could be investigated as a potential “domestic terrorist”!

These government-entwined monopoly platforms obviously exist to disseminate coordinated information operations and kill competing information. They are staffed with de facto or actual intelligence agents at levels high enough to disappear key internal records. Anyone who claims these are simply “private companies” is either not intellectually competent, in denial, or part of the ongoing psy-op to deny Americans the right to make their own political decisions based on genuinely free and open public discussions.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Here’s her printable household organizer for faith-centered holidays. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is the author of several books, including “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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Government Officials Have a Special Portal to Flag Facebook Posts for Censorship

By MICAELA BURROW, REPORTER | October 31, 2022

US-FACEBOOK — **(Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)**

The Department of Homeland Security has left open a special feature that allows government officials to flag Facebook posts for misinformation after scrapping a controversial advisory board tasked with developing guidelines for social media censorship, the Intercept reported Monday.

DHS announced plans for a Disinformation Governance Board to “develop guidelines, standards, guardrails to ensure that the work that has been ongoing for nearly 10 years does not infringe on people’s free speech rights, rights of privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in May, according to The Hill. While DHS shuttered the initiative after an onslaught of bipartisan opposition decrying the potential censorship, the Intercept found through an analysis of public and leaked documents that government efforts to police tech companies goes on.

Those activities include a Facebook portal only accessible by government and law enforcement representatives to formally request the platform kill or label alleged misinformation, according to the Intercept. A leaked set of slides contains instructions on how to operate the system, and the URL to access the site — facebook.com/xtakedowns/login — was still active at the time of publication.

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” a DHS official told a Microsoft representative in February, according to the Intercept. (RELATED: GOP Senators Release Documents Showing Biden Admin Lied About Disinfo Board)

The U.S. government has for years discussed the scope and scale of online content moderation the government should engage in, as well as how to compel social media platforms to flag or remove “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation,” the Intercept reported, citing meeting minutes and records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

The department now considers rooting out misinformation online as a critical element of its overall mission, according to a draft of the 2022 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review reviewed by the Intercept.

While the document highlights counter-terrorism as DHS’s primary objective, it acknowledges that “misinformation and disinformation spread online” can exacerbate terrorist threats from “domestic violent extremists,” according to the Intercept. It calls for DHS to use advanced computer analytical software and hire experts “to better understand how threat actors use online platforms to introduce and spread toxic narratives intended to inspire or incite violence.”

Statement on the Disinformation Governance Board ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/KXFDgmYLv1
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) May 18, 2022

However, DHS has defined the “critical infrastructure” threatened by domestic terrorists to encompass trust in government, public health and election security, according to the Intercept.

“No matter your political allegiances, all of us have good reason to be concerned about government efforts to pressure private social media platforms into reaching the government’s preferred decisions about what content we can see online,” Adam Goldstein, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told the Intercept.

Agencies under DHS — Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Science and Technology Directorate and the Secret Service — all have directives to combat misinformation online, the Intercept reported, citing a DHS Inspector General report from August.

Meta and DHS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Today’s THREE Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Jaw Breaker

A.F. BRANCO | on September 17, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-jaw-breaker/

It’s almost like some Republicans are not doing their best to win congress in the 2022 election, McConnell?

Snatching Defeat from Victory — **Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022.**

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Wrong Direction

A.F. BRANCO | on September 18, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-wrong-direction-2/

Omar is for defunding police, illegal Immigration, and no bail. all in the wrong direction for the country.

Omar of Minnesota — **Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022.**

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Pillow Talk (Revised)

A.F. BRANCO | on September 19, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-pillow-talk-revised/

Here is the updated revised version of the cartoon “Pillow Talk” big Government and big Tech attack on free speech.

My Pillow attacked — **Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022.**

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.

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Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: Thanks to federal judge, we will find out extent of government-sponsored Twitter censorship

Daniel Horowitz | July 14, 2022

Can Congress pass a law requiring that all platforms of speech censor any negative comment about Pfizer? “Well, of course not,” you will say, “it violates the First Amendment.” In that case, why should it be different when the executive branch works intimately with government-created and liability-protected monopolies to zap anyone’s Twitter account who is critical of Pfizer and its magical products? That is not free market or private enterprise; it is the worst form of fascism, and now a new federal court ruling might bring this point to life.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Louisiana granted the request from the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general for discovery to collect documents linking the Biden administration to social media censorship. Thanks to this important order, we might be able to discover the scope of collaboration between government and Twitter and Facebook to censor stories (and people) pertaining to the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, and election integrity.

On May 5, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry filed a First Amendment complaint against the Biden administration in the Western District of Louisiana alleging that the administration violated the Free Speech Clause by working with the tech giants to label all dissenting viewpoints on the aforementioned issues as “misinformation.” They alleged that this effort is being led by a “Disinformation Governance Board” (“DGB”) within the Department of Homeland Security.

In Judge Terry Doughty’s Tuesday order, he ruled that the states have standing to bring the claim and in an effort to buttress their request for an injunction against the federal collaboration in censoring private political views, they can request information from the Biden administration proving or disproving their allegations of collaboration with social media companies. The administration has 30 days to turn over the documents.

It’s already in the public sphere that the Biden administration has been leaning into social media censorship in numerous ways. Here are just a few examples:

In a March 15, 2020, email with Dr. Fauci, Facebooks’s Mark Zuckerberg proposed to coordinate with Fauci to “make sure people can get authoritative information from reliable sources” and proposed including a video message from Fauci because “people trust and want to hear from experts.” Remember, as a candidate running for president, Biden suggested that Facebook should be subject to liability for not censoring views he deemed harmful.
On May 5, 2021, former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki stated, “The president’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation.”
On July 15, Psaki went a step further and acknowledged the collaboration in private. “We are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff,” she revealed. “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” she added. This was a direct admission that what was going on behind the scenes was old-fashioned government censorship, which clearly violates the Constitution.
After that press conference, Facebook responded to the pressure by acknowledging that “the company has partnered with government experts … to take ‘aggressive action against misinformation about COVID-19.’”
The following day, Psaki took it to the next level by suggesting that the various social media companies should be collaborating with each other to ban anyone from all the platforms after being removed from one. “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others … for providing misinformation out there,” she declared. This is also the same day Surgeon General Vivek Murthy posted a misinformation advisory laying out the parameters for social media platforms to censor information on COVID and its policies.
Then of course we all remember in February when the Biden administration directly called on Spotify to censor Joe Rogan for having doctors on his show who were successfully treating COVID.

Finally, let’s not forget that the White House singled out 12 private individuals to be targeted for censorship as the “disinformation dozen.” We also know that private emails released via FOIA revealed that the CDC Foundation worked with Facebook, Merck, the WHO, and other pharma entities on an “Alliance for Advancing Health Online” initiative to control the narrative.

Thus, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that there were likely some juicy conversations going on between the tech executives and the Biden administration, probably in concert with the pharma companies, to silence all opposition. When you have the president demanding such censorship and warning that the opposing viewpoints are “killing” people, the entire argument of “private” companies being able to do what they want goes out the window. As Justice Thomas wrote in a 2021 case, it is indeed a First Amendment violation “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.”

Thankfully, it appears that this judge saw through the high-tech modern version of censorship for what it is – pure fascism.

While the legal dispute plays out in court, it’s time for conservatives in the legislatures to hit back at the RINO governors for continuing to act as if anything COVID-related – be it a vaccine or mask mandate – is somehow coming from the private sector. The government mandated it for some, censored opposing viewpoints, absolved pharma of liability, paid for the product, distributed it, and marketed it. The notion that private actors endorsing these policies is an exercise in free-market capitalism is absurd. It is the responsibility of the state to interpose against such tyranny by banning companies from joining in with the federal policies.

We saw this done very effectively when the Florida Department of Health recommended against the baby shots and refused to distribute them. Publix actually decided on its own to follow the guidance of Florida rather than the federal government. It demonstrates that so much of this enforcement in the private sector is being done with the federal boot on companies’ necks. Those Republicans who hide behind affinity for the “private” sector and free markets to allow federal tyranny, censorship, and persecution to continue are complicit in the worst form of fascism. The fact that private monopolies get roped into government fascism doesn’t ameliorate the pig; it makes it even more dangerous.

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This Insane 2020 Time Magazine Article Explains Exactly Why the Left Fears Losing Twitter

REPORTED BY: DAN O’DONNELL | APRIL 28, 2022

An astonishing but largely forgotten story in Time Magazine explains why there is so much leftist concern today about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.

DAN O’DONNELL

Of all the hysterical leftist reactions to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter on Monday, MSNBC host Ari Melber’s was easily the most revealing.

“If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don’t have to explain yourself,” he gravely intoned during his show Monday evening. “You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else, and the rest of us might not even find out about it ‘til after the election.”

You don’t say. This was in fact the way the left used social media to win the 2020 presidential election. They even admitted it openly in a stunning yet largely forgotten February 2021 article in Time magazine entitled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election.”

“For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President,” wrote reporter Molly Ball. “Their work touched every aspect of the election.”
And they wanted credit for it, Ball continued, “even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream — a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”
Their aim, they insisted, wasn’t to rig the election but to “fortify” it against then-President Donald Trump and his allies, whom they believed to be a threat to democracy itself.
“Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”

The final piece was critical, especially in the waning days of the campaign, when an October surprise in the form of Hunter Biden’s laptop threatened to derail his father’s candidacy and undo the organized left’s hard work.

The New York Post’s exclusive story dropped like a grenade less than a month before Election Day, providing “smoking-gun emails” showing that the younger Biden introduced his father “to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”

The emails, the Post explained, were obtained from a computer dropped off and apparently forgotten at a repair shop in Delaware. Under the terms of the repair agreement, the store’s owner took possession of the laptop when it was deemed to be abandoned. Twitter and Facebook, though, determined without any evidence that the emails were actually “hacked materials” and thus distributed in violation of their terms of use agreements.

Facebook quickly acted to limit the reach of the story, while Twitter took the extraordinary step of locking the Post’s account and preventing other users from sharing its story or even pictures from it. Neither Hunter Biden nor the Joe Biden presidential campaign denied that the laptop was Hunter’s, and the younger Biden’s business partner, Tony Bobulinski, went on the record a few days later with documents that confirmed the Post’s reporting, which seemed to uncover an international bribery scheme.

It didn’t matter. Once 50 obviously partisan intelligence officials issued an evidence-free statement calling the laptop materials “Russian disinformation,” it was determined that they would be censored in both legacy and social media.

Of course, more than a year after Biden was safely elected, both The New York Times and Washington Post confirmed that the laptop was genuine, but the censorship did its job: A Media Research Center poll of swing state voters confirmed that 16 percent of Biden supporters would have changed their votes had they heard of the laptop story, including 4 percent who would have switched their vote to Trump. This obviously would have swung the entire election to Trump, but that would have been an unacceptable result for the leftist cabal intent on “fortifying” democracy by stacking the deck against him. In light of the Media Research Center’s findings, social media censorship was very possibly the most effective way they did it. And naturally they had to brag about it in Time.

“Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers made disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the 2020 vote,” Ball reported. “Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it.”
She ultimately concluded that engaging with this supposedly “toxic content” or trying to debunk it was ineffective, so “the solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place.”

This research armed liberal activists to pressure social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to far more aggressively and creatively enforce their rules, prompting a crackdown on “disinformation” that was in fact completely accurate. Because it was harmful to the effort to “save democracy” and defeat the “autocratic” Trump, it was censored.

“Democracy won in the end,” Ball concluded. “The will of the people prevailed. But it’s crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.”

This reveals the real threat of Musk’s Twitter takeover: If it is no longer possible to suppress factual information in the name of rescuing democracy from its alleged enemies, then those enemies (read: Republicans) might start winning more elections. And that is simply unacceptable.

Dan O’Donnell is a talk show host with News/Talk 1130 WISN in Milwaukee, Wis. and 1310 WIBA in Madison, Wis., and a columnist for the John K. MacIver Institute.

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Did The New York Times Admit Joe Biden Is Corrupt So Democrats Can Get Rid of Him?

REPORTED BY: JOY PULLMANN | MARCH 23, 2022

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris wearing facemasks

It is painfully obvious, as was predictable, that Joe Biden’s presidency is a dumpster fire. As demonstrated by the party’s destructive callousness towards children, the elderly, and the poor during their Covid lockdown frenzy, Democrats care about none of these real-world results of their policies. But they do care about polling, and Joe Biden’s is abysmal.

According to even heavily politicized polls, Biden is at least performing as badly as Donald Trump. Biden is between the third- and fifth-most ratings-underwater president ever in American history at this point in his first term.

Biden of course also has the advantage of a wildly favorable press and social media monopoly while Trump had the strong headwind of a wildly negative one. That factor obscured for a great many of American voters actions that easily demonstrated long before his election that Biden was unfit for the presidency.

Now that he’s president, however, and very publicly bungling essentially every major issue all the way up to U.S. national security, Biden’s weakness and incompetence have been impossible for the corrupt media to entirely cover up. Biden’s appalling withdrawal from Afghanistan may have been the first major blow to public confidence in his governing ability, and it’s been followed by blow after blow: the repercussions of ending U.S. energy independence, historic inflation caused by massive government spending, aggression by America’s foreign foes, a tacitly open border with human trafficking of historic proportions, not to mention fueling America’s legalized mass killings of unborn infants and forcing schools to inflict gender dysphoria on the children in their care.

So yes, the polls look bad. That’s why Democrat officials suddenly switched away from their Covid mania, lifting mask mandates in blue states, ending the daily falsified “body counts” on TVs and newspapers, and jumping immediately into European war hysteria. But that’s not been enough to turn those polls around. Historic indicators presently suggest a “red wave” in the upcoming midterms.

That brings us to The New York Times’s recent “limited hangout“: its highly suspicious, very late acknowledgment that, hey, that laptop containing evidence that Joe Biden is just as corrupt as his son Hunter Biden told Russian prostitutes — that laptop is real, and so is its data. Yes, the United States’s top foreign adversaries likely have blackmail material on the U.S. president, and likely paid him some very big bribes.

Oh, and yes Twitter and Facebook did use their global communications monopolies to rig the election for Joe Biden by hiding this information (and who knows what else).

Why would The New York Times do this — and Facebook and Twitter not ban this information release just like they did before? Well, one explanation is hierarchy reinforcement. As I wrote Monday, like forcing their “minions” to wear face masks, the ridiculously belated laptop confirmation also equals the ruling class “flexing their power to say things they won’t allow their political opponents to say.”

There’s another explanation, though. It’s that Joe Biden is no longer useful to the ruling class. After being used to win an election, he’s now making it impossible for them to credibly foist on Americans the idea that his party could win another one with him on their masthead. The donkey is showing through the lion skin, and so they need a new donkey.

So while it seems utterly legitimate to insist on accountability such as appointing a special counsel to investigate the Biden family’s apparent corruption, that also could relieve the Democrat Party of their greatest liability. They’d probably deeply appreciate that, in fact. Biden got the ruling class what they wanted, and they don’t need him any more. Getting rid of him now would in fact be highly convenient for maintaining their power.

There’s only one problem with that. Kamala isn’t at all going well for them either.

In which it dawns on the Biden White House that Vice President Harris is not up to the job. From @playbookdc on new @jmartNYT and @alexburnsNYT book: https://t.co/86qnWPGA8l pic.twitter.com/P31Byp72Cw
— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 22, 2022

Enjoy that bed you made for yourselves, Democrats. I hope it’s at least as uncomfortable as that bed you’ve made for all the Americans whose long-term outlook is more suffering, thanks to Democrats’ criminal prioritization of power for themselves above all else.

The chairman of the Fed is talking about our formerly 'transitory' inflation lasting *three more years.* From @djheakin https://t.co/8Z0UwItrss pic.twitter.com/4Qszu2qLgJ
— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 22, 2022

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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The New York Times Doesn’t Care If You Know That Big Tech Helped Rig Joe Biden’s Election

REPORTED BY: JOY PULLMANN | MARCH 21, 2022

On March 17, 2022, The New York Times stated it had verified the authenticity of a laptop and its data as belonging to the president’s son, Hunter Biden. This was the same laptop holding information that Twitter, Facebook, and other corporate media immediately suppressed when The New York Post, a right-leaning competitor of The New York Times, reported on it three weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

If they had known about one of the Biden family scandals, such as the Hunter Biden laptop information, 17 percent of Joe Biden’s voters wouldn’t have voted for him, found a 2020 post-election poll. This means big tech’s suppression of this story likely made enough difference to tip Joe Biden into his low-margin win in the Electoral College.

Back in October 2020, Twitter and Facebook immediately responded to The New York Post’s publication of information from Hunter Biden’s laptop by effectively banning it from their platforms that effectively monopolize public discussion. Twitter punished the Post for reporting the repeatedly authenticated laptop information by suspending its account for two weeks.

“What this means is that, in the crucial days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, most of the corporate media spread an absolute lie about The New York Post’s reporting in order to mislead and manipulate the American electorate,” commented independent investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald.

Major National Security Implications

That laptop provides evidence Joe Biden was involved in Hunter Biden’s pay-for-play schemes with foreign oligarchs, an obvious national security risk. Some of these corrupt deals involved Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt country that is currently petitioning the Biden administration to engage militarily with Russia on their behalf.

Russia also has blackmail material on Hunter Biden, according to videos from his laptop, and the FBI knew about this as early as 2019, according to Federalist reporting: “This explosive revelation establishes that either Joe Biden lied to the American public, or the intelligence community lied to him,” wrote Federalist Senior Contributor Margot Cleveland in 2021.

Other Hunter Biden business deals involved China, the United States’ top security threat. Texts between business partners indicate Joe Biden was financially involved in Hunter Biden’s China deals, contrary to Joe Biden’s public claims.

China also has blackmail material on Hunter Biden and possibly on Joe Biden. All of this means major conflicts of interest for the president’s foreign policy at a time of significant global instability. It also was deliberately hidden from the voting public by collusion between big tech companies and the Democrat Party.

Hiding Democrats’ Dangerous Scandals

The same presidential administration that benefitted from Big Tech hiding damning true information is openly colluding with Big Tech to maintain and expand these information operations. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in July 2021, “We’re flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” Soon after, Psaki confirmed, “We’re in regular touch with social media platforms…about areas where we have concern.” You might call it a public-private partnership.

Democrats have demanded that the Biden administration create a task force to suppress “misinformation” and “disinformation.” What did corporate media and big tech call the laptop information they suppressed in 2020, only for The New York Times to confirm in 2022? That’s right: “Disinformation.” In fact, as Greenwald notes, intelligence operatives immediately enacted a real disinformation campaign against the New York Post reporting in 2020, pushing the false narrative that the Hunter Biden laptop was “disinformation.”

That’s called projection, and you should assume that’s one of the things going on every time the media runs some wild news cycle—such as accusing the Republican president of treasonous collusion with Russia when it’s actually the Democrat presidential candidate who did that.

Reinforcing the Power Hierarchy

This New York Times article, after all the lies and manipulations about the Hunter Biden laptop, is also a chilling public affirmation that the ruling class believes Americans are helpless to choose their own government. They’re even bold enough to confirm their power openly.

Just like requiring only the hired help and those under the thumb of government agencies to wear masks while their masters wine and dine mask-free, The New York Times openly revealing that corporate media including itself, Twitter, and Facebook lied and got away with it is a hierarchy flex. It’s a display of their power. They are saying, “We can lie to Americans and get away with it.”

They’re also flexing their power to say things they won’t allow their political opponents to say. Again, Covid is another clear example, as when Trump advisors such as Scott Atlas faced vicious media smears for pointing out facts that The New York Times finally acknowledged months later, such as that kids don’t need to wear masks and it’s perfectly safe for them to go to school. In the intervening time, children needlessly suffered, but The New York Times doesn’t care. They owned the rubes, and that matters more to them than truth or children’s suffering.

People this corrupt don’t deserve to have media platforms, control of the presidency, or any power of any kind. At the very least, those who use their power this cynically should be respected by absolutely no one.

Big Tech Is a Threat to Democracy

Big Tech is also clearly manipulating public discourse for highly partisan ends. Social media has become what the “big three” cable news networks were decades ago: falsely “nonpartisan” manipulators of elections. Like ABC, CBS, and NBC, Twitter and Facebook’s ability to control culture and politics through brain drips feeding lies into millions of Americans’ minds needs to end, yesterday. This is not a pissing contest. It’s about our continued existence as a nation.

Greenwald notes the corporate press and big tech “all ratified and spread a coordinated disinformation campaign in order to elect Joe Biden and defeat Donald Trump.” That’s not a democracy, no matter how many slogans about that word propaganda outlets put out. It’s tyranny.

When elections are an elaborate charade and their outcomes are openly manipulated by giant special interests, we don’t have self-government, self-determination, democracy, constitutional government, representation, or any of the above. For those of us who love these things because we believe they are our God-given and precious rights and responsibilities, this is a dark reality to behold.

One might call this world the left wants to live in Chinese communism with American characteristics. Well, I don’t want to live in that world, and neither do at least 74 million other Americans. We’re not going to keep being abused by our own government quietly. And we’re not going to believe these liars, no matter what they say.

The top names on everyone’s mind when they hear the word “disinformation” ought to be The New York Times, Twitter, Facebook, The Atlantic, and all their corrupt, self-congratulating Aspen Institute friends. That’s something we can all work to help our neighbors see.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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Political

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Million-Dollar Bounty Placed on Vladimir Putin

Reported By Abby Liebing | March 3, 2022

A bounty has been put out for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Alex Konanykhin, a Russian businessman, has offered a $1 million bounty to Russian officers to arrest Putin as a war criminal, Business Insider reported.

“I promise to pay $1,000,000 to the officer(s) who, complying with their constitutional duty, arrest(s) Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws. Putin is not the Russian president as he came to power as the result of a special operation of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia, then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and murdering his opponents,” Konanykhin wrote in a Facebook post.

The explosion to which Konanykhin referred is part of a theory that the Russian Federal Security Service, of which Putin was head from 1998 to 1999, blew up apartments in 1999, then blamed it on Chechens. That explosion, was part of what sparked the Second Chechen War, an effort that made Putin very popular in Russia. In 1999, Putin became the Russian prime minister, before being named acting president on Dec. 31 of that year. He was elected to the presidency in March 2000, the Independent reported. With obvious animosity, Konanykhin also noted that he felt it was his duty to oppose Putin’s war and keep assisting Ukraine against the Russian president.

“As an ethnic Russian and a Russia citizen, I see it as my moral duty to facilitate the denazification of Russia. I will continue my assistance to Ukraine in its heroic efforts to withstand the onslaught of Putin’s Orda,” he added in his post.

Konanykhin’s original Facebook post included a photo of Putin, with the caption, “Wanted: Dead or alive. Vladimir Putin for mass murder,” the Independent reported.

Facebook then banned his post.

But Konanykhin then re-posted with just the text informing about his bounty offer.

“Facebook banned my post; do you think it was a correct decision? I omit the picture as it was a ‘dead or alive’ poster, but this is the text,” he wrote.

Konanykhin is one of the many Russian businessmen who rose to wealth and prominence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Newsweek. Konanykhin said he has not visited Russia since 1992, Business Insider reported.

The Russian businessman has a complicated history with the Russian government. In 1996 he was in the U.S. but was arrested after Russian authorities claimed he has embezzled $8 million from the Russian Exchange Bank, the Independent reported. However, the U.S. gave him political asylum after several FBI agents testified that the Russian mafia had put a contract on Konanykhin. Several years later, his asylum was revoked, but he was not deported. A U.S. district judge cancelled his deportation, saying that returning Konanykhin to Moscow “stinks.”

After placing a bounty on Putin, Konanykhin was asked if he feared that Putin would come after him for putting a bounty on his head.

“Putin is known to murder his opponents,” he said, Business Insider reported. “He has millions of them now.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abby Liebing, Associate

Abby Liebing is a Hillsdale College graduate with a degree in history. She has written for various outlets and enjoys covering foreign policy issues and culture.

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International Politics

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Why Tech Totalitarianism Threatens To Turn America into Canada or China Unless We Stop It

REPORTED BY: KARA FREDERICK | FEBRUARY 23, 2022

Portions of this article were adapted from the author’s recently published paper at The Heritage Foundation, “Combating Big Tech’s Totalitarianism: A Road Map.”

Last week, our Canadian neighbors mobilized their national security apparatus against working-class citizens protesting government overreach. The Biden administration is no doubt taking notes. In fact, the contours of a similar strategy are already emerging in the United States. First, the FBI reportedly tagged parents opposed to critical race theory with a “terrorism” label under the direction of Biden’s Department of Justice. Then, the DOJ revealed plans to stand up a domestic terror unit fixated on “anti-government or anti-authority” ideologies. Now, a new Department of Homeland Security terrorism bulletin classifies Americans as potential violent extremists if they question the administration’s Covid-19 policies or election integrity narrative by spreading “mis- dis- and mal-information” on social media. This should send a chill up Americans’ spines.

The willingness of the U.S. government to classify movements to the right of leftist ideology as “domestic extremism” lays the groundwork for the purging of these citizens from digital platforms — and all of digital life. We are entering a reality in which tech companies target average conservative organizations, users, and speech as part of this push. Just after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Google co-founder Sergey Brin referred to Trump voters as “extremists” and suggested using Google’s tech incubator, Jigsaw, to shape their opinions. In July 2021, Facebook began testing “extremism” warnings on users who engaged with popular, mainstream conservative accounts. This problem is a small outgrowth of a broader one shaping the new digital atmosphere: the efforts of companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and TikTok to skew the political and cultural environment of this nation and its inheritors.

These corporations interfere in our elections, actively undermine our First Amendment freedoms by silencing speech they don’t like, work together to disadvantage or destroy existing or potential competitors, and partner with government actors to intimidate, surveil, and silence Americans. They’re even purposefully poisoning the next generation, targeting American youth with highly addictive content that has been shown to do legitimate harm.

Governments are not the only actors capable of encroaching on Americans’ individual liberties. Private, monopolistic corporations should be held accountable if they violate these liberties to the degree Big Tech has in the past two years alone. Efforts to rein them in should reflect an imperative to protect Americans’ natural rights against abuses flowing from the consolidation of power — whether by the government, private corporations, or a combination of the two. Big Tech’s willingness to shut off direct access to digital information, their demonstrated pattern of information manipulation, and their effect on America’s culture of free speech have decisive political and cultural ramifications.

Censorship against viewpoints to the right of center runs across platforms and is pervasive and accelerating. The Media Research Center found in September 2021 that Twitter and Facebook censor Republican members of Congress at a rate of 53-to-1 compared to Democrat lawmakers. By its own admission, Facebook created two internal tools in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory that suppressed “very conservative” media reach on its platform. Google stifled conservative-leaning outlets such as The Daily Caller, Breitbart, and this publication during the 2020 election season, with Breitbart’s Google search visibility reportedly shrinking by 99 percent compared to the 2016 election cycle. Finally, at least 17 digital platforms banned Trump or affiliated accounts within a two-week span in early January 2021 — all while Chinese Communist Party, Iranian, and Taliban spokesmen enjoy a voice on these American-owned platforms.

To contest this imbalance, conservatives attempted to take matters into their own hands and “build their own” digital platform. Yet when such a company, Parler, developed an app that reached the top of the Apple store in the early days of January 2021, Apple, Google, and Amazon Web Services acted within approximately 48 hrs of each other to vanquish it. Parler has yet to recover a fraction of the users it gained during January 2021. The “build your own” argument wilted in the face of concerted opposition by these entrenched juggernauts.

Further, the distinction between the coercive power of the government and that of a private company is negated when they work hand-in-glove to achieve the government’s ends. Jen Psaki admitted from the White House podium in July that the government was “flagging problematic posts” for Facebook to censor. Within a month, the accounts she and the surgeon general surfaced were removed from Facebook. And that’s just what the two Biden officials admitted out loud. In fact, Psaki again took to the podium in February 2022 to declare that media app Spotify could do more regarding comedian Joe Rogan, intimating the private company should expand its censorship of the podcasting star for platforming views that buck the administration’s Covid narrative.

Less than a month earlier, Biden had called on tech companies to police Covid-related speech. Even at the state level, at least one lawsuit alleges that the Office of the Secretary of State for California worked directly with Twitter to flag and scrutinize a conservative commentator over his election skepticism, ultimately resulting in his suspension in February 2021.

Suppression of conservative speech as a response to political pressure is not limited to social media alone. Online payment processors and fundraising platforms, email delivery services, and web hosting services are all taking their cues from and following in Big Tech’s footsteps. What happens in the future when your individual environmental, social, and governance score or level of climate change compliance is unsatisfactory for every online banking service intent on staying in the good graces of the government? In effect, our country is sleepwalking into a CCP-style social credit system.

This type of control also tears at the cultural underpinnings of our society. The disposition toward freedom of expression is central to the American way of life. Supporting an unpopular opinion in the digital public square or donating to political causes should not mean risking your livelihood. These practices erode our culture of free speech, chill open discourse, and engender self-censorship. In a more concrete sense, Big Tech’s practices result in measurable, destructive effects on the next generation of young citizens. Author Abigail Shrier documents social media’s influence on social contagions of the moment, stating that these sites offer an “endless supply of mentors” to fan the flames of gender dissatisfaction among teen girls.

According to Facebook’s own research, 6 percent of teen Instagram users who reported suicidal thoughts traced their emergence directly to Instagram. Teenage girls in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia are likely developing verbal and physical tics by watching influencers on TikTok who exhibit the same habits, in addition to being fed eating-disorder videos, according to The Wall Street Journal. (As of early 2021, 25 percent of TikTok users in America were teenagers or younger.)

Big Tech companies have proven themselves irresponsible stewards of their government-enhanced power. A recalibration of their relationship to the American people is warranted. The answer exists in solutions that promote human flourishing and arrest the infringement of God-given rights by private entities, such as freedom of speech. American policymakers and representatives should take on Big Tech as uniquely deleterious to a healthy body politic and invest in a diversity of tactics to meet the moment. The aggregate effect of these measures should be far more scrutiny, pressure, and oversight over Big Tech companies.

A comprehensive agenda to end Big Tech’s undue influence over Americans’ daily lives and subversion of their rights is necessary. Measures should confront legitimate anti-competitive behavior by these global oligopolies by enforcing antitrust laws and reforming them where necessary. Lawmakers must also ensure that the government does not continue to use tech companies as their agents to chill speech. The deployment of Big Tech’s ad-tech models — the heart of what allows these companies to manipulate and exploit the data of Americans — merits particular congressional scrutiny.

Additionally, Big Tech executives should be held civilly liable for legitimate instances of fraud and breach of contract, just as GoFundMe’s decision to refund the Freedom Convoy donations instead of dispensing them to charities of their choice was likely influenced by threats of a fraud investigation.

Transparency in content moderation practices, algorithmic impacts, and data use should be non-negotiable for these companies. Americans have a right to know how their data is collected, stored, and shared in plain English. Data privacy and a national data protection framework are also critical to righting Big Tech’s wrongs.

In tandem, Americans should be given new ways to fight back when their rights are infringed upon, as well as obtain prompt and meaningful recourse from Big Tech companies. All companies and tech founders should institute expanded user control mechanisms and design privacy-preserving technologies from the outset in their products.

And finally, these tech companies should no longer be permitted to work directly with our adversaries such as the Chinese Communist Party.

Sovereign citizens of the United States do not exist solely to serve the economy or maximize gross domestic product. Despite their success in the stock market, Big Tech companies are actively eroding citizens’ ability to maintain a self-governing republic. Absent drastic measures to arrest the progress of this march toward totalitarianism with a tech face, we risk the welfare of a nation. It must end here.

Kara Frederick is a Research Fellow in the Center for Technology Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Her research focuses on Big Tech and emerging technology policy. She helped create and lead Facebook’s Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program and was the team lead for Facebook Headquarters’ Regional Intelligence Team. Prior to Facebook, she was a Senior Intelligence Analyst for a U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command and spent six years as a counterterrorism analyst at the Department of Defense.

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HIGH TECH, Political

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Health ‘Experts’ Finally Admit Masks Control People, Not Viruses

Reported BY: KYLEE ZEMPEL | JANUARY 05, 2022

masks worn by Joe Biden (speaking) and Anthony Fauci

We’ve been censored. Hollered at by Karens in the grocery store and sometimes even outdoors. We’ve been lectured, demonized, scoffed at, and called murderers and rubes — all for the sin of ignoring mask security theater and daring to show the lower half of our faces in public. That’s why it’s just remarkable to hear the experts now admit that the same face coverings required in so many establishments and localities are not stopping any virus from spreading.

CNN medical analyst Leana Wen, who was previously president of abortion giant Planned Parenthood, said so on the network — and not only in reference to the current variant, as if new data has suddenly justified a change in guidance. She explicitly said cloth masks haven’t been effective since the dawn of the Wuhan virus.

“Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic. It’s not appropriate for omicron, it was not appropriate for delta, alpha, or any of the previous variants either, because we’re dealing with something that’s airborne,” Wen said.

And just like that CNN admits cloth masks do not stop COVID

We are in the turn pic.twitter.com/qzbzOellzC
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) December 28, 2021

“Don’t wear a cloth mask,” she said in another segment, going so far as to call them little more than “facial decorations.”

Whoops pic.twitter.com/rJ9fV4hlJ4
— Eli Klein (@TheEliKlein) December 21, 2021

It isn’t just one floating head on CNN. In a letter to Capitol Hill staffers, the attending physician reportedly announced the end of blue surgical masks, cloth masks, and gaiters, ordering that “the more protective KN95 or N95 masks” must now be worn.

“…[S]urgical masks are NO LONGER ENOUGH for an airborne virus that’s transmitting as fast or faster than any virus known to mankind,” tweeted a paranoid professor from the University of Colorado at Boulder. The Washington Post jumped in too.

And here’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spilling the beans that a surgical mask “is not considered respiratory protection.”

WebMD piled on also, urging Americans to discard the kind of cloth face masks worn by busybody fellow shoppers while they lecture the unmasked to cover their faces. Those aren’t good enough and never have been.

This is now the wisdom imparted by the experts, that the sweaty, flimsy, itchy muzzles that have been forced on schoolchildren, healthy athletes, socially distant employees, grocery-shopping moms, and even their toddlers are “not appropriate.” They’re nothing more than “facial decorations” against a virus that’s in the air and can’t be contained.

It’s almost like conservatives have been reading the available scientific studies and saying this since the beginning, like here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Maybe sweat-soaked cloth masks in the gym actually aren’t great for your health, many on the right suggested. My 3-year-old’s mask that she can’t stop touching probably isn’t keeping her healthier, others thought. Yet the response from the left to this pushback was routine scorn and censorship.

Amazon banned a book by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson that discussed the scientific evidence that mask mandates are ineffective. Big Tech weaponized fake fact-checks to choke out The Federalist’s science-backed reporting on masks. Former White House COVID Task Force advisor Dr. Scott Atlas was banned from publishing references to scientific mask studies, as CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta cheered Twitter on. Google-owned YouTube infamously nuked a June interview of Atlas.

Yet now, the left’s “experts” are going on network television to announce that we must stop wearing the cloth and surgical masks that have become synonymous with COVID morality, and they’re announcing that actually we’ve known these masks have been “inappropriate” all along.

Americans are just supposed to take this. In response to the gaslighting, they’re just supposed to obediently discard the cloth masks they’ve been berated and coerced into wearing and instead go buy some stronger mask to protect God-knows-who from this wave of a virus that manifests as the common cold for even the vast majority of the yet-unvaccinated.

While in many sane areas of the country, masks have long been an afterthought, that’s not the reality for other Americans. Mask mandates still prevail in too many places, with the entire state of Oregon tossing around the idea of a “permanent” mask mandate.

Other authoritarian pockets such as Madison, Wisconsin, just never let their temporary mandates expire. Of course, these mandates don’t require any particular kind of face covering. So as Wen said, the masks are nothing more than “facial decorations,” meaning the mandates are nothing more than political theater.

The gaslighting is enough to drive anyone absolutely mad, but with the experts’ admission that most of our masks aren’t cutting it, they’ve also admitted something far more consequential. These masks and the mandates that accompany them have never been about controlling a virus. They’ve always been about controlling people.

Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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Political

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Big Tech Launches Another New Year Purge Of Political Dissidents

Reported BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JANUARY 05, 2022

Marjorie Taylor Greene — **IMAGE CREDIT 11ALIVE / YOUTUBE**

It was this time last year Silicon Valley rolled out a long-anticipated purge of political dissidents from the 21st-century digital public square, starting all the way at the top with President Donald Trump. In the aftermath of a two-hour riot at the Capitol, the outgoing president became the most canceled man in America. The dynamic later flipped, making him uncancellable as a consequence of social media giants’ dramatic overreach.

Within 48 hours last year, Trump was stripped from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Shopify pulled the president’s online stores from its platform and YouTube escalated its enforcement against claims of voter fraud.

Then came a crackdown on Republican supporters. TikTok blocked the hashtag “patriotparty.” Reddit banned the massive r/DonaldTrump subreddit page, and tech giants Apple, Google, and Amazon colluded to make Parler, the free speech alternative to Twitter, a relic of the past. It’s only a matter of time before they make same example out of Gettr, another social media platform gaining traction.

On Sunday, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was permanently suspended from Twitter. Her crime? Sharing statistics from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) maintained by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to the New York Times, Greene published a chart from the CDC claiming the data showed “extremely high amounts of COVID vaccine deaths.”

The post earned Greene a fifth and final strike under Twitter’s policy against “misinformation,” which provokes permanent suspension. Greene was given her third strike in July when she claimed the novel Wuhan coronavirus was not dangerous for individuals under 65 and at a healthy weight. Greene’s official Twitter account remains online with nearly 400,000 followers.

Shortly after Greene was kicked from Twitter, the Georgia congresswoman was slapped with a 24-hour suspension on Facebook for a similar alleged violation of the platform’s community standards, i.e., permitted viewpoints. Greene revealed the suspension in a Telegram post Monday morning.

“A post violated our policies and we have removed it; but removing her account for this violation is beyond the scope of our policies,” a spokesperson for Meta, formerly Facebook, told the Wall Street Journal.

Greene, a sitting member of Congress, is not the only one to suffer immediate de-platforming to start off the new year. Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer in mRNA technology, was also kicked off Twitter for unclear reasons just before his appearance on the “Joe Rogan Podcast.”

A viral clip from the podcast outlining the presence of “mass formation psychosis” gripping the western world over coronavirus hysteria then became the subject of censorship on Google-owned YouTube.

Tucker Carlson Calling Out Big Tech For Censoring Dr. Robert Malone & Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene Will Be On Tucker's Show Tomorrow Night pic.twitter.com/rnZWQGHnxw
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) January 4, 2022

Just as last year introduced a radical escalation of censorship, this year promises to be no different. Trump was at least an outgoing elected official when he was removed from nearly all major online platforms last year, with less than 20 days left in office. Greene is only halfway through her first term with no plans to retire.

The censorship won’t stop. The ideological forces behind it have benefitted too much. It helped land their preferred presidential candidate in the White House. It kept millions of Americans trapped in their homes for months on end to record profits for big business. It’s enabled bad actors to manipulate the public discussion and brand outcasts out of those who fail to follow the predetermined narrative, to detrimental consequences.

There’s another election just 10 months away, and therefore a lot more to censor.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Political

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Marjorie Taylor Greene lashes out after suspensions from Twitter and Facebook

Reported By Leonardo Blair, Christian Post Reporter | Monday, January 03, 2022

Firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called Twitter “an enemy to America” after her personal account on the social media platform was permanently suspended on Sunday for allegedly violating the company’s COVID-19 misleading information policy. She revealed Monday that she’s also been suspended by Facebook for 24 hours due to a similar violation.

“Facebook has joined Twitter in censoring me. This is beyond censorship of speech. I’m an elected Member of Congress representing over 700,000 US tax paying citizens and I represent their voices, values, defend their freedoms, and protect the Constitution. But apparently they too think the CDC managed #VAERS system on our own government websites are misinformation,” Greene noted on the social platform GETTR Monday.

“To date there has been ZERO investigation into reported Covid deaths from government mandated #covid vaccines. Who appointed Twitter and Facebook to be the authorities of information and misinformation? When Big Tech decides what political speech of elected members is accepted and what’s not then they are working against our government and against the interest of our people.”

Twitter permanently suspended Greene after she shared information on Saturday alleging “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” In her tweet, she included a chart from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a government database that keeps track of claims of complications from vaccines submitted by members of the American public.

Many have pointed to the VAERS database to voice concerns about the potential effects of the coronavirus vaccines. The project is jointly managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to serve as an “early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines.” Anyone can report to the database and healthcare professionals are required to report certain adverse events. Manufacturers are required to report adverse events that come to their attention.

A disclosure on the website says that the database is not “designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem, but is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine.”

A Twitter spokesperson told The New York Times that the tweet marked Greene’s fifth time violating its COVID-19 misinformation policies, thereby earning her the permanent suspension.

“We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough told the publication.

The ruling can be appealed if the post in question is later determined to be true.

The CDC maintains that COVID-19 vaccines “are safe and effective” and recommended for anyone ages 5 or older. Critics contend that opponents of vaccines misinterpret the VAERS data to make false claims about vaccines.

Greene pushed back on the assertion that she had used all five strikes in a GETTR post Monday: “Twitter forgot about the two times they accidentally suspended my account this past year. That means I’ve only had 3 strikes in their 5 strike system. Twitter has to reinstate my account immediately.”

In a Facebook post published Sunday after her suspension, Greene called the company “an enemy to America” that “can’t handle the truth.”

Additionally, Greene alleged a double standard in the enforcement of the Twitter rules:

“Maxine Waters can go to the streets and threaten violence on Twitter, Kamala and Ilhan can bail out Black Lives Matter terrorists on Twitter, CNN and the rest of the Democrat Propaganda Media can spread Russian collusion lies, and just yesterday, the Chief spokesman for terrorist IRGC can tweet mourning Soleimani, but I get suspended for tweeting VAERS statistics.”

She also claimed on GETTR that Twitter will be “irrelevant” by the end of 2022.

“By the end of this year, Twitter will be irrelevant and will lose it’s grip on American politics. The arrogant puppet masters should have learned over this last year that silly punishments like kicking me off committees and permanent Twitter bans don’t work on me, they only make me more determined, stronger, & effective,” she wrote.

“I’m not here for the club, I’m only here for the People, which the elites in our government and all powerful media/big tech, and their Communist Global partners just want to abuse and control. They will fail and the People will win,” she continued. “When I’m pushed out, I’m able to see very clearly the problems, how to fix the broken system, and more importantly who are the ones to blame. Yesterday started very big things. The sun is setting on Twitter.”

Greene, who presents herself as a strong Christian in Congress, does not shy away from confrontational politics. In September, she got into a heated exchange with Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., over what it means to be a good Christian shortly after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would codify the right to abortion into federal law.

Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost

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Political

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Swing-Vote Manchin Received Major Advertising Attention Throughout 2021

Reported by MICHAEL GINSBERG | CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER | December 27, 2021

House And Senate Lawmakers Work On Capitol Hill — **Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images**

Messaging groups on both the left and the right have targeted Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin with ad campaigns, and the deluge shows no signs of slowing down. Throughout 2021, West Virginians have been bombarded with television, radio, and online ads urging them to contact Manchin with their stances on issues such as tax increases, child care, prescription drug pricing and abortion. As a potential tie-breaking vote in an evenly-split Senate, Manchin has pushed back on some of the furthest-left ideas proposed by his fellow Democrats, and has refused to eliminate the filibuster.

Political groups began blanketing West Virginia with ads targeting Manchin as early as May, according to the advertising analytics company Medium Buying. A left-wing group, End Citizens United/Let America Vote, spent nearly $1 million from May 4-June 22 on ads promoting the HR1 For the People Act. Manchin opposes that bill, but supports the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 12: Adam Smith, End Citizens United, along with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and other voting rights advocates from across the country join to deliver a petition to the White House calling on President Biden to publicly urge the Senate to end the filibuster. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Stand Up America)

A right-leaning group, Maintaining Mountain Values, spent just over $100,000 during that time period on messaging against an infrastructure deal between Republicans and Democrats, according to Medium Buying. As debate over Build Back Better began to heat up, the group ran ads claiming that “America elected Biden, but got Bernie instead.”

On the left, the WV New Jobs Coalition, made up of the West Virginia Working Families Party, the Sierra Club, and the West Virginia Citizens Action Group, spent $250,000 on advertising shortly after Manchin announced his opposition to Build Back Better. The ad claims that the social spending package would decrease inflation.

In addition to traditional radio and television spots, many organizations targeted Manchin through Facebook advertisements. Groups like Americans for Prosperity, Business Roundtable and Susan B. Anthony List ran ads against Democratic legislation, while Patients for Affordable Drugs NOW and Future Majority promoted messaging in favor. Despite the state having only the 4oth-largest population in the country, advertisers spent the 25th-largest amount of money on Facebook political ads for West Virginia users between Sept. 27 and Dec. 25, according to the social media site’s disclosures.

The conservative America First Policy Institute (AFPI) jumped into the advertising fray on Dec. 15. It ran ads in every West Virginia radio market noting the Build Back Better bill’s impact on the coal and natural gas industries, as well as inflation and job off-shoring. AFPI’s messaging, which also included cable television and digital ad buys, was part of a campaign against the bill that included several conservative organizations. Shortly after AFPI began the media blitz, Manchin announced his opposition to the current form of the package.

“This has been a team effort, and it’s far from over,” AFPI President Brooke Rollins said in a statement to the Daily Caller. “Our goal at AFPI, and the goal of our Save America Coalition, has always been to use our resources efficiently and effectively to educate people about policies that would harm our way of life and that of American families, businesses, and workers. A proposal that would increase inflation, raise taxes, kill jobs, and prioritize the Chinese Communist Party over American workers is dangerous for everyone, regardless of party affiliation.”

Manchin’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on the advertising efforts.

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Facebook Quietly Admits Its Third-Party ‘Fact-Checks’ Are ‘Opinions’

DECEMBER 13, 2021 By Jordan Boyd

Facebook admitted that its so-called “fact-checking” program is actually cranking out opinions used to censor certain viewpoints.

In its latest legal battle with TV journalist John Stossel over a post about the origins of the deadly 2020 California forest fires, Facebook, now rebranded and referred to as “Meta,” claims that its “fact-checking” program should not be the target of a defamation suit because its attempts to regulate content are done by third-party organizations who are entitled to their “opinion.”

Stossel’s original complaint questioned whether “Facebook and its vendors defame a user who posts factually accurate content, when they publicly announce that the content failed a ‘fact-check’ and is ‘partly false,’ and by attributing to the user a false claim that he never made?” Facebook, however, claimed that the counter article authored by Climate Feedback is not necessarily the tech giant’s responsibility.

Facebook went on to complain that Stossel’s problem isn’t with the Silicon Valley giants’ “labels” on his content but with the obscure organizations that Facebook employs to do its “fact-checking” dirty work.

“The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion,” Facebook admitted. “And even if Stossel could attribute Climate Feedback’s separate webpages to Meta, the challenged statements on those pages are likewise neither false nor defamatory. Any of these failures would doom Stossel’s complaint, but the combination makes any amendment futile.”

It’s no secret that Facebook uses its “fact-checking” program to curb information that it wants to be censored, and this November lawsuit gives more insight into the Big Tech company’s methods and twisted rationale.

“The independence of the fact checkers is a deliberate feature of Meta’s fact-checking program, designed to ensure that Meta does not become the arbiter of truth on its platforms,” the lawsuit stated before admitting that “Meta identifies potential misinformation for fact-checkers to review and rate. … [I]t leaves the ultimate determination whether information is false or misleading to the fact-checkers. And though Meta has designed its platforms so that fact-checker ratings appear next to content that the fact-checkers have reviewed and rated, it does not contribute to the substance of those ratings.”

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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House Republicans Press Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen, Democrats On Big Tech Censorship Concerns

Reported by AILAN EVANS | TECH REPORTER | December 01, 2021

Photo by Zach Gibson:Getty Images 1212121 — **Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images**

House lawmakers considered several proposals to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, with Republicans and Democrats each using the opportunity to advance their agenda.
“It’s wrong for anyone to use this opportunity to push for more censorship, more power, and more control over what they determine Americans should say, post, think and do,” Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said. “One of the bills before us today, the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act, is a thinly veiled attempt to pressure companies to censor more speech.”
Democratic Rep. Darren Soto dismissed allegations of tech censorship, arguing that Republicans were attempting to use free speech concerns to spread disinformation.
The hearing also featured left-leaning witnesses who stressed the dangers of misinformation and hateful speech on social media platforms, calling on lawmakers to reform Section 230 in order to hold platforms liable for such content.

House lawmakers considered several proposals to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, with Republicans and Democrats each using the opportunity to advance their agenda.

While both parties lobbied for Section 230 reforms, their reasons for doing so and their proposals diverged considerably; Republicans stressed the dangers of tech companies censoring online speech, particularly conservative political content, and Democrats decried the threat posed by social media misinformation.

In her opening remarks, Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers emphasized her concerns with tech platforms censoring speech, characterizing Democrats’ Section 230 reforms as an attempt to encourage social media companies to remove more conservative political content.

“It’s wrong for anyone to use this opportunity to push for more censorship, more power, and more control over what they determine Americans should say, post, think and do,” McMorris Rodgers said. “One of the bills before us today, the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act, is a thinly veiled attempt to pressure companies to censor more speech.”

The bill, introduced by top Energy and Commerce Democrats, removes Section 230 liability protections from tech platforms that recommend “personalized” content contributing to “physical or severe emotional injury” of a user, thereby allowing “injured” users to sue. Rep. Frank Pallone, who co-sponsored the bill, said the legislation would stop social media platforms from promoting “extremism” and “disinformation.”

“Clearly, companies will have to decide between leaving up content that may offend someone and fight it in court, or censor content that reaches a user; which do you think they’ll choose?” McMorris Rodgers asked.

Democratic Rep. Darren Soto dismissed allegations of tech censorship, arguing that Republicans were attempting to use free speech concerns to spread disinformation.

Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing entitled ‘Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower’ on Capitol Hill October 5, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“It seems like as we’re working on key reforms like protecting civil rights, accountability for social media companies, and protecting our kids, the main opposition is by Republicans today; they want a license to have the right to lie without consequence,” Soto said.

House Republicans also pressed key witnesses including former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who has called for increased federal oversight of social media platforms’ content moderation decisions.

“I wanted to start with a yes-or-no question: do you support Big Tech’s censorship of constitutionally protected speech on their platforms?” McMorris Rodgers asked Haugen.

“I believe we should be re-architecting these systems so that they are more focused on our family and friends, because this is not about good ideas or bad ideas; it is about making the system safe,” Haugen responded.

When McMorris pressed Haugen for a clear yes or no answer, she failed to provide one.

The hearing also featured left-leaning witnesses who stressed the dangers of misinformation and hateful speech on social media platforms, calling on lawmakers to reform Section 230 in order to hold platforms liable for such content.

“Big Tech is profiting off of yelling ‘fire in a crowded theater,’ and though I understand that we have these conversations about the First Amendment, there are limitations to what you can and cannot say,” Rashad Robinson, president and CEO of left-wing advocacy group Color of Change, adding that “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.”

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Democrats Are Using The Same 2020 Election Shenanigans To Overtake Virginia This Year

Reported By Hayden Ludwig | NOVEMBER 1, 2021

Virginia’s hotly contested gubernatorial race is just days away, and with Republican Glenn Youngkin and former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe tied in the polls, the professional left isn’t leaving anything to chance. A McAuliffe defeat is largely considered a bellwether for congressional Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

So how do Democrats plan to ensure a McAuliffe win and a subsequent retention of power in the state and U.S. Senate? By using the same tactic they used in the 2020 national contest: profligate mail-in voting and fake grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts funding by philanthropies and wealthy leftists, a strategy revealed through Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s gift to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL).

And it’s a smart strategy. Joe Biden voters were twice as likely as Donald Trump voters to vote by mail in 2020, for example; and we know the effect of Zuckerberg’s millions on the 2020 election. The Capital Research Center specializes in exposing the activists behind these efforts. Here’s what we’ve discovered about the funding and activists behind them.

Getting Out the Vote for Democrats

Vote Forward is one of the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) groups swamping Virginians with a letter practically begging them to vote early. Here’s my copy:

Vote Forward is ostensibly nonpartisan—until you look at its original website from 2018, which reads “Flip the House Blue: Send letters to unlikely voters.” Elsewhere, the group admits it was founded to send “get-out-the-vote” mailers to “traditionally underrepresented communities,” code for Democrat-leaning constituencies.

The New York Times praised Vote Forward’s goal of boosting Democrat turnout just one week before the 2020 election. An old FAQ states that many of its campaigns “typically target low-propensity voters who we believe are likely to vote for Democrats when they do cast a ballot.”

In 2020, that target was 10 million voters. To make that happen, Vote Forward sued the U.S. Postal Service, accusing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a Trump nominee—of “undermin[ing] USPS’s ability to ensure the on-time delivery of mail ballots” in the 2020 election. The details of their settlement remain unclear, but USPS agreed to deliver mail-in ballots in time for Georgia’s January special election, the result of which ultimately handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

Like many organizations that present themselves as more interested in voting than election outcomes, Vote Forward is part of the Left’s Voting Machine: A massive web of interconnected GOTV nonprofits commanding tens of millions of dollars, mostly gifted by ultra-wealthy institutions like the Ford, Gates, and Rockefeller Foundations.

We’ve traced more than $600,000 flowing to Vote Forward from the Hopewell Fund, part of a $731 million “dark money” network run by the consultancy Arabella Advisors in Washington, DC. After studying this network for years, it’s become clear to us that wherever Arabella is involved, one is sure to find the left’s top operatives as well.

For example, Vote Forward’s board includes Ezra Reese, a partner at Perkins Coie and its Marc Elias-led spin-off (the Elias Law Group) “focused on electing Democrats, supporting voting rights, and helping progressives make change”—a fact you won’t find advertised on the “nonpartisan” group’s website. Perkins Coie is the left’s law firm of choice. Elias was general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and a partisan operative whose past dealings include George Soros-funded efforts to abolish voter ID laws.

A Flood of Mail-In Ballots

In September, I reported on a new wave of 2 million applications for Virginians to register for absentee ballots in 2021. These applications weren’t sent out by state or local elections officials, but by politically active nonprofits: the Voter Participation Center and Center for Voter Information (collectively “the center”). An internal memo details the spots they planned to cover most aggressively, many of which parallel Biden’s performance in 2020.

The center explicitly targeted the “New American Majority,” another code for likely Democratic voters that they define as “young people, people of color and unmarried women.” That bloc contains 73 percent of all unregistered voters nationwide, which is why the left-wing strategists at the Democracy Alliance consider their turnout “central to progressive long-term success.”

The IRS requires all nonprofits be officially nonpartisan in order to be tax exempt. In the center’s case, nonpartisanship comes in the shape of a fig leaf—as liberal journalist Sasha Issenberg explains in his 2012 book, The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns: “Even though the group was officially nonpartisan, for tax purposes, there was no secret that the goal of all its efforts was to generate new votes for Democrats” (emphasis added).

The center sent out 15 million vote-by-mail applications in 2020 and registered 4.6 million new voters. Time credits the center’s partisan registration efforts as central to the “shadow campaign that saved the 2020 election” for Biden. No surprise that the center is heavily funded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, and Tides Foundation.

Will Zuck Bucks Continue?

We were among the first to report in-depth on how billionaire Zuckerberg and the little-known Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) spent $350 million to effectively privatize the 2020 election in battleground states, helping turnout for Biden in the name of COVID-19 “relief.”

Overnight, this little nonprofit’s revenues grew by more than 12,000 percent from $2.8 million thanks to Zuckerberg’s cash injection—fueling its “nonpartisan,” “charitable” façade to elections officials and helping Democrat turnout in precisely the spots Biden needed to win the presidency.

Across nine states, our data shows that CTCL’s grants consistently ignored Trump counties in favor of big, Democratic-leaning spots like Philadelphia, Maricopa County, and Houston—all essential to Biden’s victory. In Georgia, for instance, Biden counties were two-and-a-half times more likely to receive CTCL funding than Trump counties.

Virginia received close to $4 million in Zuck Bucks, more than one-third of which went to populous Fairfax County to “support in-person early voting” and “vote by mail.” Fairfax County was Biden’s biggest vote-haul in the state and is the linchpin to McAuliffe’s strategy.

Nearly $970,000 paid for “temporary staffing support” to bolster Fairfax County’s elections agency. That may sound innocuous, but as CTCL expert William Doyle recently wrote at this site, that funding “supported the infiltration of election offices by paid Democratic Party activists.”

[CTCL] funded self-described ‘vote navigators’ in Wisconsin to ‘assist voters, potentially at their front doors, to answer questions, assist in ballot curing … and witness absentee ballot signatures,’ and a temporary staffing agency affiliated with Stacey Abrams called ‘Happy Faces’ counting the votes amidst the election night chaos in Fulton County, Georgia.

Fairfax County applied for an extension to its CTCL grant in January, but ultimately returned its remaining $187,709 in April, spokesman Brian Worthy told me. To his knowledge, the county has not applied for another grant for the 2021 election. That’s a good start, but to save the integrity of our elections, Zuck Bucks need to be banned. No exceptions.

There’s no faster way to destroy what remaining trust Americans have in their elections than by giving them to the highest bidder. Private funding of elections would take us back to the worst of the 19th century robber barons, when rich political machines won elections by buying public officials and intimidating voters. It also presents opportunities for foreign interests to manipulate our politics and undermine American sovereignty.

It’s unknown how much CTCL money remains in Virginia or if the group has continued to make grants here. Neighboring Fairfax City reports $14,175 in CTCL funds leftover for the 2021 election.

CTCL has been surprisingly mum about the ongoing election considering how loudly it advertised open-ended grants to Georgia counties in January. It’s possible that the dozens of exposés, hundreds of critical news articles, flurry of state Zuck Buck bans, and an inquiry from furious congressional Republicans silenced the leftists running CTCL.

Or maybe not. A recent CTCL statement calls lawsuits against its grants program “frivolous” and its funding “equitable,” particularly in small counties with small elections budgets.

Today’s left has cynically embraced Zuck Bucks out of short-term thinking, believing like NPR that “private money from Facebook’s CEO saved the 2020 election.” That’s a losing hand. Americans can see that the same leftists who’ve now embraced plutocracy were just yesterday crying “eat the rich” and “abolish billionaires.” Close to a dozen states have already banned Zuck Bucks and grassroots groups are leading a national movement to audit the 2020 election and save the country.

Leftists believed the country would overlook their desperate indiscretions, claiming—as CTCL does—that Zuckerberg’s unprecedented spending spree somehow made 2020 “the most secure election in U.S. history.” We’ll know even more in December, when CTCL releases its IRS Form 990 filing to the public. If coming revelations are anything like observers expect, that claim will age about as well as milk.

Hayden Ludwig is an investigative researcher for the Capital Research Center in Washington, DC.

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Senator Mike Lee Op-ed: Big Tech Insists They’re Protecting Americans From China While Importing Chinese-Style Social Controls

Commentary By Mike Lee | OCTOBER 22, 2021

If you need evidence that Big Tech firms are starting to worry about the growing movement to diffuse their immense market power, look no further than their newest scare tactic: using China as an excuse to avoid antitrust scrutiny.

Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and the nonprofit proxies they pay to defend them have put a lot of effort into trying to convince America that subjecting Big Tech to more stringent antitrust enforcement or regulation would have dire consequences. They’ve warned that innovation would suffer, but that rings hollow when so many of the new innovative companies are already being bought up (and then often shut down) by Big Tech.

They’ve suggested that antitrust action might result in the loss of the free services we’ve come to depend upon. But how do they call their services “free” when we pay for them by giving them all of our personal data, which they store and monetize, and when they rely on our content to make their platforms valuable in the first place?

Big Tech firms have told us we should be grateful for the superior quality of their services, which could suffer if they were broken up. But then again, one could argue that Google Search was better before it was filled with ads.

YouTube was better before its algorithms tried to corrupt our children and amplify the reach of terrorists. Facebook was better before it censored people of faith and conservatives, while protecting those who post revenge porn. Instagram was better before it drove our teenagers to anxiety and depression. Amazon was better before it silenced conservative authors and raised questions about its influence on a multibillion-dollar defense contract.

Having failed with each of those claims, Big Tech has turned to a new bogeyman: China. Antitrust enforcement actions against Big Tech—or legislation aimed at restoring and protecting competition in Big Tech markets—would risk crippling America’s ability to combat the growing threat from Communist China, or so the line goes. The cynicism would be offensive if the argument weren’t so laughable.

It’s not just lobbyists bringing these arguments to my office and others on Capitol Hill. Earlier this summer, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in an interview, “These gross proposals like breaking them up and so forth, it’s not going to be helpful because it’s going to set us back against China.”

Last month, the National Security Institute began a series “examining the national security implications of antitrust challenges at home and abroad.” The first panel featured Big Tech defenders suggesting the antitrust laws were written for late-19th-century monopolists and are too outdated to deal with Big Tech, and that Big Tech is a driver for research that is essential to national security. Antitrust scrutiny, they implied, might hinder the companies’ ability to compete with China, who won’t be imposing the same restraints on their own companies.

Like every other excuse Big Tech has made, this too rings hollow and we should flatly reject it. That doesn’t mean the antitrust laws should be enforced in the absence of actual anticompetitive harm. Nor does it mean that we should radically alter our antitrust laws to embrace a “big is bad” philosophy. But the idea that Big Tech should be treated with kid gloves makes no sense. The fact is, American ingenuity is strong enough to compete and win on the merits without coddling or amnesty from our antitrust laws.

Competition, and the innovation and disruption that facilitate it, are what made these companies American success stories. That same competition, innovation, and disruption are what will keep them at their best or make way for the next great American success story. You see, competition in Big Tech doesn’t threaten American, it threatens the monopolists—and that makes America stronger.

Insulating American companies from competition out of a fear of foreign competitors will do the opposite of what Big Tech claims to want: we will be stuck with stagnant monopolists too complacent either to benefit American consumers or to protect us from foreign threats.

In fact, it is Big Tech companies themselves that pose the greatest threat when it comes to China. They not only can’t protect us from foreign threats, but in some cases actively cooperate with them.

Google has been accused of working with the Chinese military, and has acknowledged developing a filtered version of its search engine to satisfy Chinese censors. Amazon has been working with a Chinese partner to expand its web-hosting services in the highly censored country.

The New York Times revealed earlier this year that Apple—which assembles nearly all of its products in China— has stored data on Chinese government servers, shared customer data with the Chinese government, removed apps from its App Store to appease the Chinese government, and banned apps from a critic of the Chinese Communist Party. The Times also alleged that Facebook was courting the Chinese government in 2016 by developing a censorship tool. Facebook has admitted to sharing data with Chinese state-owned companies, and last year it undertook to expand its Chinese ad business.

These are the benevolent corporate heroes who are going to save us from the Chinese threat? Give me a break.

Far from saving us, it seems like the habits of their new Chinese friends are rubbing off on our Big Tech big brothers. In a way, Silicon Valley is helping America keep up with China: now we too have censored speech on the internet, constant surveillance, and tightly controlled marketplaces.

Instead of embracing the very crony capitalism that has been so destructive to American prosperity in the past, American firms should spend more energy competing on the merits for Americans’ business, and less time cozying up to Chinese bureaucrats. The free market should pick winners and losers, not Communist apparatchiks.

This whole episode leads me to only one conclusion: insisting that antitrust enforcers pull their punches or risk impairing our ability to face the threats from China is nothing short of corporate extortion, a protection racket at a global scale. What we need is more competition, and less protectionism. The only way we will defeat the economic threat of communist China is by empowering American businesses to challenge and disrupt the would-be Chinese collaborators that make up Big Tech.

The hypocrisy is glaring: Big Tech wants to assist Communist China in exchange for access to its economy, while pointing to the Chinese threat as an excuse for anticompetitive and monopolistic conduct in the United States. Americans deserve better, and we should refuse to entertain this disingenuous and insulting excuse.

Mike Lee is a U.S. Senator from Utah and author of “Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America’s Founding Document.”

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Donald vs Goliaths

A.F. BRANCO on July 8, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-donald-vs-goliaths/

Trump initiates a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google for censorship against conservatives.

Trump Lawsuit Against Big Tech — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco coffee table book “Keep America Laughing (at the left)” ORDER HERE

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.

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Facebook Loses Teen Sex Trafficking Case, Legal Defeat Puts Social Media Platforms in Crosshairs

Reported by Jack Davis | June 26, 2021

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled against Facebook as the social media giant tries to use a controversial federal law to dodge liability for its platform being used by human traffickers to recruit victims. The ruling allows three survivors of human trafficking who want to sue Facebook to move forward with their cases, according to Forbes. Facebook had argued it was not responsible for what its users say under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.

Section 230 has become a controversial piece of law, with critics saying it gives social media companies too much power. Forbes reported that in 2018, Congress carved out exceptions to Section 230 so that lawsuits could be brought against companies that violate human trafficking laws. In his opinion, Justice Jimmy Blacklock noted those limits.

“We do not understand section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking,” he wrote.
“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing. … Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”
“Section 230, as amended, does not withdraw from the states the authority to protect their citizens from internet companies whose own actions — as opposed to those of their users — amount to knowing or intentional participation in human trafficking,” the ruling said.

The case involved three women who, according to the ruling, “allege they were victims of sex trafficking who became entangled with their abusers through Facebook.” One was 15 years old when she was befriended by a Facebook user who told her he would help her pursue a modeling career.

“Shortly after meeting him, Plaintiff was photographed and her pictures posted to the website Backpage (which has since been shut down due to its role in human trafficking), advertising her for prostitution. As a result, Plaintiff was ‘raped, beaten, and forced into further sex trafficking,’” the ruling said.

YOU CAN READ THE REST OF THIS REPORT AT https://www.westernjournal.com/facebook-loses-teen-sex-trafficking-case-legal-defeat-puts-social-media-platforms-crosshairs/

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – What Coulda Been

A.F. BRANCO on June 2, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-what-coulda-been/

How today’s social media Fact-Checkers could have affected history had they existed back then.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Whitewash

A.F. BRANCO on June 3, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-whitewash/

Conservatives are racist says Biden a man who was good friends with KKK Democrat, Senator Byrd.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Wall of Silencing

A.F. BRANCO on May 7, 2021 | A.F. Branco Cartoon – Wall of Silencing – Comically Incorrect

Big tech oligarchs are blocking free speech against conservatives in favor of Democrats.

Big Tech Oligarchs Blocking Free Speech — Political cartoons by A.F. Branco ©2021

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Army chaplain under investigation over Facebook posts critical of transgender troops

U.S. Army soldiers pray on September 11, 2011, during a protestant service at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. Ten years after the 9/11 attacks in the United States and after almost a decade of war in Afghanistan, American soldiers gathered for church services in prayer and solemn observance of the tragic day. | John Moore/Getty Images

A U.S. Army chaplain based in Texas faces an investigation after he made a social media post suggesting that transgender individuals are “mentally unfit” to serve in the military.

In a Jan. 26 tweet, the Army’s Security Force Assistance Command announced that “the recent comments posted to the Army Times Facebook page by Maj. Andrew Calvert regarding President Joe Biden’s policy on transgender service members are “under investigation.”

“How is rejecting reality (biology) not evidence that a person is mentally unfit (ill), and thus making that person unqualified to serve?” asked Calvert as he commented on a Facebook post from the Army Times.

A Twitter user flagged Calvert’s posts and argued that Calvert “cannot be trusted to support soldiers for another minute.”

In his post, Calvert argued that there is “little difference” between those who believe in transgenderism and “those who believe and argue for a ‘flat earth’ despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

“The motivation is different, but the argument is the same,” the chaplain stated. “This person is a MedBoard for Mental Wellness waiting to happen. What a waste of military resources and funding!”

In his Facebook profile, Calvert describes himself as a “Christian, Husband, Father, Pastor, Army Chaplain.” His profile also notes that he is employed as a brigade chaplain at the 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade, located in Fort Hood, Texas. In a subsequent Facebook comment, Calvert argued that his position was “not extreme in the slightest.”

“The most nurturing counsel I can give to someone who is under the delusion of transgenderism (gender dysphoria) is to recommend professional counseling to assist in the healing process,” Calvert reportedly wrote in the post. “To not do so, and merely pander to make-believe social whims of the moment, is not only damaging but idiocy.”

Calvert’s Facebook posts came after Biden, who took office on Jan. 20, announced the reversal of President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military. The former president cited the “tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail” as the justification for his decision. By doing so, Trump reversed an Obama-era policy allowing openly transgender individuals to serve in the Armed Forces.

Additionally, the Security Force Assistance Command’s post instructed members of the Army to “Always remember to ‘Think, Type, Post’ when it comes to engaging in conversation on social media platforms.”

“We are soldiers 24/7 and that means always treating people with dignity and respect,” the tweet reads.

pic.twitter.com/3qFTm8dGUt

— Security Force Assistance Command (@armysfac) January 27, 2021

A Christian professor has also faced consequences for his criticism of Biden’s reversal of Trump’s military transgender policy. Professor Robert Gagnon of Houston Baptist University was locked out of his Facebook account for 24 hours after referring to transgender ideology as a “religious cult” and a “pseudo-science” in a comment defending a friend’s satirical commentary about Biden’s reversal of the transgender military ban.

In addition to Calvert and Gagnon, prominent conservative organizations were also quick to criticize Biden’s executive order. Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative activist organization Family Research Council, asserted that by signing the executive order, Biden was “diverting precious dollars from mission-critical training to something as controversial as gender reassignment surgery.”

Perkins added that “the military cannot focus its efforts on preparing to fight and win wars when it is being used as a vehicle to advance the far-left agenda.”

“After considerable study, the previous administration found gender dysphoric people attempt suicide at about nine times the rate of the general population,” said Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr, the director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.

“Service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria are also nine times more likely to have mental health encounters with a professional.”

Spoehr contends that it would be “immoral” to place individuals at higher risk from mental injury in situations “where they are likely to experience extraordinary stress.”

Calvert is hardly the first Army chaplain to face the prospect of punishment for holding to biblical Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Scott Squires, who served as an Army chaplain at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, faced the possibility of “career-ending punishment” in 2018 after telling a lesbian couple that they could not participate in a marriage retreat he was hosting because his religious beliefs taught him that marriage was a union between a man and a woman.

Ultimately, the couple was allowed to attend the retreat after another chaplain was tapped to host the event. While the U.S. Army initially recommended that Squires be charged with dereliction of duty, the chaplain was cleared of all charges a year later.

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Facebook bans Christian prof. from platform for opposing Biden’s transgender military policy

The Instagram and Facebook logos are displayed at the 2018 CeBIT technology trade fair on June 12, 2018, in Hanover, Germany. | Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

A Christian university professor has been suspended from Facebook for voicing disagreement with President Joe Biden’s executive order allowing trans-identifying individuals to serve in the U.S. military.

Robert Gagnon, who teaches New Testament theology at Houston Baptist University and is a renowned scholar on the subject of sexuality, was locked out of his Facebook account for 24 hours on Tuesday after he posted a comment in defense of a friend who posted a satirical commentary about Biden’s executive order. Facebook suspended Gagnon’s account for what it deemed as “incitement” to violence.

In his post, Gagnon said the executive order will endanger women, and noted that those who promote transgenderism are allowing males to invade women’s athletics and shelters. He also likened transgender ideology to a “religious cult” and said it “is indeed a pseudo-science,” in that it forces people to reject basic biology. That Facebook suspended his friend for similar comments proves the cult-like dimension, he said.

Facebook subsequently sent Gagnon a notice, informing him that his words violated their “Community Standards on violence and incitement.”

“There was absolutely no incitement to violence on our part. We abhor violence done to any person,” Gagnon told PJ Media on Tuesday. “This is just a thinly veiled and pathetic excuse for censorship of any critical views toward trans-tyranny over our consciences, religion, and reason.”

“Only one point of view is being allowed,” he continued. “Trump was not the great danger to the Republic. Left-wing canceling is.”

After the day-long Facebook suspension was lifted, Gagnon posted on his page Thursday: “We are in the midst of rapidly accelerating public censorship of our views (with compelled speech) but we are not the victims. Neat trick.”

Gagnon’s friend, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, who was also banned from Facebook, had expressed her exasperation in a Facebook comment in which she pointed out that women who signed up to serve in the Armed Forces will now have to shower and bunk with males as a result of the executive order. Higgins referred to transgender advocacy as a “cult” whose goal is to spread “alchemical pseudo-science” globally “before the truth can pull up its pants” and continue to accuse Republicans as being “science-deniers.”

Higgins was banned from the social media platform for seven days and remains locked out of her account as of Thursday. The Christian Post reached out to Gagnon for additional comment on this article but did not receive a response by press time.

Conservative critics of Biden’s executive order have said that the change in policy imperils military readiness and that it’s tantamount to “social engineering.” Opposition to the order, however, spans the political spectrum.

In comments sent to CP earlier this week, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to ever be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being dismissed from service on the basis of sexuality, said she would “bet that no one thought to ask military women how they’d feel having an intact [male] in their barracks, showers, etc.”

“Military women already face difficulties when they serve — witness the recent spate of murders and the shocking statistics on rape in the military. Now, men have had the lack-witted brainlessness to add to the burden of military women. And wait until a female to trans wants to serve in the men’s barracks. What will the military do when such a woman is raped or assaulted — or killed?” she said.

Ben-Shalom, who describes herself as a “moderate independent” added that the move is a “slap in the face” to the military.

“This is pandering to a community that has many, many problems in terms of mental health and stability. This is pandering to Big Medicine, Big Pharma, and Big Money,” she said.

The Pentagon has said that approximately 9,000 service members identify as transgender, though independent estimates have put the number at around 16,000, according to The Wall Street Journal. Fewer than 1,000 have received a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

In 2016, the RAND Corporation published a study on Pentagon medical expenditures and found that the costs incurred by U.S. taxpayers to pay for trans-identifying service members’ medical costs fell somewhere between $2.4 million and $8.4 million each year.

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Exclusive: Facebook permanently bans retailer PatrioticMe from advertising pro-America products

Reported by CHRIS PANDOLFO | January 12, 2021

LeeAnn Miller would like an explanation from Facebook after the ad account for her business was disabled by the tech giant seemingly for no other reason than being patriotic. Miller, 50, is a wife, mother, and a business owner. In 2019, when her youngest son, Hollis, started college, she decided that after spending many wonderful years as a stay-at-home mom raising children, she would like to get back to work and help contribute to the financial stability of her family. That year, Miller had an idea. Holding the conviction that there is no better place on Earth than the United States, and desiring to give back to her country, she founded PatrioticMe, an online retailer that sells various clothing items.

“It took about a year to get things exactly the way I wanted them, the products and the website,” Miller told TheBlaze in an interview.

The apparel sold by PatrioticMe has, well, an obvious patriotic flair. These are shirts adorned with red, white, and blue or an outline of the United States. Hoodies with the American flag. Hats you could proudly wear to your Fourth of July cookout and every other day too, just because you love America. And the business, which launched on Sept. 11, 2020, to honor the heroic American first responders of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was a success at first.

“I had been a stay-at-home mom for years, and I was glad to be back in the workforce doing a little something to contribute to my family’s income and future,” Miller said. “I believe in my product, I have a great product, I love the shirts, they’re comfortable. We get great reviews on them from the people who have bought them. And I really felt like I was doing something good for the country, to promote patriotism.”

A portion of every sale is donated to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a charity founded to honor the sacrifice of New York City firefighter Stephen Siller, who gave his life to save others as a first responder on Sept. 11, 2001. Tunnel to Towers provides mortgage-free smart homes to veterans or first responders with catastrophic injuries suffered in the line of duty or to gold star families with surviving spouses and young children.

“I chose from the very beginning not to be partisan, at all,” she explained, noting that her products are for every American. “I feel like that is so important. I want everybody to be patriotic.”

The trouble with Facebook began the day after the election.

Miller, in partnership with Quantify, a business development firm, had advertised her products on Facebook. PatrioticMe’s advertisement was simple. It was made to look like a Facebook post with text before pictures featuring models wearing items for sale.

The text stated:

Loving your country shouldn’t be hidden.

Check out our new line of long sleeve shirts!

We have an attractive range of patriotic clothes to show that love off! 10% off on your order for a limited time!

Every time you purchase, We donate a portion of it to the tunnel to the tower foundation.

Miller provided a screenshot of her advertisement to TheBlaze:

On Nov. 4, 2020, she received an email from the Facebook Ads Team informing her that her advertisements did not comply with Facebook’s advertising policies or other standards.

“Ad Account Disabled for Policy Violation,” declared the subject line of the email, which was provided to TheBlaze.

“It appears your ad account was used to create one or more ads that don’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards,” the email stated.

“Our policies and standards help keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone. We use either technology or a review team to remove anything that doesn’t comply with our policies or standards as quickly as possible,” Facebook told Miller.

Instead of providing her with guidance as to which policies PatrioticMe’s ad violated, the email provided Miller with a link to the page outlining the entirety of Facebook’s advertising policies. She was also given two options: To take an “e-learning Blueprint course” called “Ad Policies for Content, Creative, and Targeting” to learn about the entirety of Facebook’s advertising policies, or to request a review of her ad account if she believed it shouldn’t be disabled.

The notice came as a shock.

“My shirts say, ‘U.S.A’, or ‘America’, or have the flag or outline the country. They’re all very benign,” Miller said.

Believing her advertisements were disabled in error, she contacted Facebook requesting a review of PatrioticMe’s account that very day. In response, she received a second email from Facebook, nearly identical to the first. After three requests for review, the Facebook Ads Team sent Miller a final notice on Nov. 24 that her restricted account would not be re-enabled.

“All ad accounts are evaluated for policy compliance and quality of ad content. Due to your ad account consistently promoting ads that don’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards, the ad account has been disabled,” the Facebook Ads Team told her.

Particularly frustrating for Miller is that throughout the review process, she was unable to speak with a live human being even once about why her ads were disabled.

“They never give anything other than kind of a canned response,” Miller told TheBlaze.

“We’ve never been able to get in touch with a live human. I have tried, and Quantify has tried on my behalf, and we have never been able to talk to a live human being about the problem and what we can do to fix it.”

Facebook’s final decision is that PatrioticMe can no longer advertise with its ad account and all of its advertisements and assets on Facebook will remain disabled.

It’s a decision that Miller said has cost PatrioticMe 94% of its traffic.

“I’ve hardly had any sales” since the ban, Miller explained. “What Facebook gave me the ability to do was to promote my business to people that I don’t know around the country, what I would call an ‘organic sale,’ somebody that saw my product, liked my product, and bought it and did not have a personal relationship with me.”

Without Facebook ads, PatrioticMe is having trouble reaching out beyond Miller’s immediate friends and family.

Upon review of Facebook’s advertisements policy and community standards, TheBlaze could not identify what content in Miller’s ad would violate either set of its policies. TheBlaze reached out to Facebook for clarification and for comment, but the company did not respond before this article was published.

Asked why she thinks her ads were disabled, Miller could only speculate that Facebook took issue with her products’ patriotic message.

“I have to believe that in the current climate they were taken down because a lot of people think patriotism is bad. A lot of people think the American flag scares people. It’s really hard for me to understand, but the only thing I really have to go on is what that first email said, that I violated the policy of, you know, Facebook providing a safe and welcoming environment,” she suggested.

“And to me, that’s absurd, that anybody in this country, even people that immigrate here, they come here for what that flag stands for: Freedom and prosperity, and everything that that flag has to offer, and that’s what that flag represents to me anyway. And it’s really hard for me to imagine that it scares people or makes people feel unwelcome.”

Miller wishes that a live human being representing Facebook would communicate with her business and say specifically what is wrong with her ads.

“Please show me the ads that are offensive and please tell me specifically what is offensive about them, and what would meet your community standards. What would I need to do to change my ads to make them acceptable for Facebook?”

“You can report Facebook ads if you think they are offensive. So I’m not really sure if somebody reported my ad, or if some bot picked it up and flagged it, or if an employee of Facebook did that,” she added.

For now, Miller says she is working with her business development partner Quantify to find new ways to advertise and expand PatrioticMe’s reach. But she still wonders why Facebook has rejected her business

“Here I am willing to pay them money to run ads, have they gotten so big that they don’t even care about making money?”

https://patrioticme.com/

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The Trump Purge Makes Living In America More Like Living In China

After the terrifying ransack of the U.S. capitol Wednesday during a Donald Trump “stop the steal” rally, big tech companies are joining leftist elites in the media and government in their effort to squash the Trump movement once and for all. Seizing on the backlash from the riot, they have seamlessly banned President Trump from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

What happened at the capitol was an embarrassment for our country. Now, the hypocritical outcries from Democrats, who proudly condoned left-wing Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters as they terrorized American cities all summer, are ushering in a great reckoning.

The Jan. 6 demonstrators, the vast majority of whom were peaceful, were there to protest legitimate claims of election irregularities and voter fraud. But Google-owned YouTube doesn’t want you to know that. They announced Thursday that they will ban all videos about voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The one free speech haven, Parler, Apple is keying up to ban from its app store and bar from iOS devices, claiming content on the website contributed to the capitol unrest. Google has already jumped the gun, banning Parler yesterday.

Every corner of the Trump movement is being publicly purged from the internet. Thursday, Shopify stripped all online stores for President Trump, including the Trump Organization and Trump’s affiliated campaign account.

Anyone who has supported the president is in for it, as well. Rick Klein, the political director at ABC News, in a now-deleted tweet said that getting rid of Trump is “the easy part.” The more difficult task will be “cleansing the movement he commands.” Democrats have already created a “Trump Accountability Project,” an enemies list to ban, cancel, or fire anyone who staffed, donated to, endorsed, or supported President Trump and his administration.

Trump subverted the elites who run our country. He took on big pharma and China. He negotiated, renegotiated, and destroyed trade deals in his mission to put America and American workers first. He went to war with critical race theory institutionalized in our schools and in government.

He stood for things that those who run our biggest corporations and hold our highest government positions detest. For virtually his entire presidency, they tried everything to delegitimize his administration, beginning with the now-debunked Russiagate. Trump showed their corruption, and now he will pay.

The man, the administration, and his supporters will likely go down in history books as delusional and dangerous. Why? Because the left has a monopoly on power, so they can control what people see and therefore think.

As the left’s arbiters of “truth,” big tech has been banning users they don’t agree with and suppressing stories like The New York Post’s blockbuster investigation into Hunter Biden‘s laptop and sketchy deals with foreign governments and companies with ties to the Communist Chinese government. With the help of their partisan “independent fact checkers,” big tech and the media made sure average Americans never knew about this before they went to the polls.

Following the riot among Trump supporters in the capitol, Facebook removed President Trump’s video calling for peace and rule of law, claiming it instigated violence. Then Facebook de-platformed him. Trump’s speech didn’t fit the narrative that he was a pro-violence, lawlessness insurrectionist.

This disturbing reality we live in, where one political party now has the power to control the narrative in all aspects of our lives — school, work, social media, and government — might make us feel eerie echoes of living under Chinese Communist Party influence instead of in the United States of America.

Perhaps what’s most troubling, and something that we might not have even considered in the chaos of the last few days, is the long-term impact this will have on American children. Generation Z or Zoomers, aged 13 to 21, may be one of the first generations that is more influenced by what they see and read on social media and the internet than what they hear at the dinner table from mom and dad.

A Business Insider’s poll found that 59 percent of Zoomers listed social media as their top news source. While technology used to serve as a way to make information accessible, a way to have the world at your fingertips with just a quick search, it has become something much different. It is teaching the youngest and most impressionable among us that suppression is normal and personal censorship is an important survival mechanism.

Children are being taught to watch what they say and think, lest they be labeled a racist, white supremacist, homophobe, or xenophobe. Indeed, making a pro-Trump TikTok video can get your college admission rescinded and subject you to intense personal harassment. A three-second insensitive or politically incorrect Snapchat video from 2016 can get you featured in a New York Times article and your college admission rescinded, and subject you to bitter bullying.

For young people today, it’s becoming normal to see political leaders in our country deemed “dangerous” to be ousted from public platforms and ostracized from society. They watch their parents self-censor at work, fearful of backlash from employees or coworkers that could get them fired.

Americans used to support the right of people to hold and express opinions others disagree with. Yet the newest generation believes feelings are more valuable than freedom. Study after study finds that younger people are more supportive of limiting speech than are older generations.

A recent survey found that an overwhelming majority of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison think the government should be able to punish “hate speech.” Of course, “hate speech” is simply the left’s ambiguous term for anything veering from the leftist orthodoxy on issues such as abortion, sex, race, and immigration.

Silicon Valley oligarchs have an agenda. They aren’t platforms, they are publishers, which should nullify the privileges they enjoy under Section 230. Will the Democrats who are now running our government do anything to stop big tech tyranny? Of course not.

This problem is not going away. America’s ethos of free speech and expression is going extinct at the hands of big tech and the leftists controlling media and government.

The U.S. Capitol riots are over, thanks to law enforcement. However, the censorship that followed has created a dangerous precedent.

For young people, their “normal” is beginning to feel increasingly like it’s heading towards life in China. It’s less free and tolerant than the America their parents grew up in. Imagine how much worse things will be when today’s youths are running the country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Evita Duffy is an intern at The Federalist and a junior at the University of Chicago, where she studies American History. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, & her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1

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What Big Tech Didn’t Want You To See On The Federalist In 2020

Reported by Joy Pullmann | DECEMBER 29, 2020

Leftist media has skewed U.S. politics for decades, but Big Tech’s amplified influence over global discourse and governments is new. While Congress passed no legislation related to this political and national security emergency, we the people were held captive in lockdowns during a major election while crucial public information was filtered, hidden, and surveilled by unaccountable companies with no allegiance to the United States and obvious disdain for hundreds of millions of its inhabitants.

This is a huge social problem. Regaining our freedom to speak and to share and compare information may be the first task towards redressing our grievances against those who claim to govern us. For how can consent of the governed be truly granted when the people’s ability to inform their consent is manipulated? It cannot.

To regain our self-governance, then, we all need to develop new habits of information-gathering and -sharing. As a tiny part of and precursor to more of that effort, here is an accounting of Federalist work that Google, Facebook, and Twitter tried to keep people from seeing in 2020.

You will notice it fits the pattern of big tech censorship that big tech claims isn’t censorship: it all goes one way politically. All of it also comprises election-meddling by effectively promoting misinformation and disinformation on key voting issues.

Just Plain Hiding the News They Can’t Use

In June, a foreign think tank, NBC, and Google colluded in an attempt to demonetize The Federalist in retaliation for our coverage of Black Lives Matter rioting. The tech giant demanded we end our commenting section, and continues to refuse to allow it back. Google-owned YouTube also continues to shadowban Federalist content and choke our engagement.

In July, Google claimed it had “mistakenly” made it impossible for people to find a slew of conservative news sites, including CNSNews.com, The Washington Free Beacon, Breitbart, Twitchy, RedState, PJ Media, The Blaze, Townhall, LifeNews, PragerU, and The Daily Wire.

After the election, Instagram slapped a warning label on a post in which President Trump honored Pearl Harbor Day. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, put an automatic “fact check” on Trump’s post that claimed Joe Biden won the election, although Trump’s post included nothing about the election results. Instagram later removed the “warning.”

In October, “Twitter suspended U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan for a post celebrating the success of the U.S. southern border wall keeping violent criminals from reaching American communities,” reported The Federalist’s Tristan Justice.

The online publisher banned Morgan, a public official, from communicating the elected president’s publicly stated priorities, telling him in an automated message the post violated the publisher’s “hateful conduct” policies. Morgan had written: “@CBP & @USACEHQ continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact, walls work.” If this is hate speech, all conservatives are criminals.

Evidence of Biden Family Corruption

Infamously, Twitter and Facebook tampered with the 2020 election in October by immediately and actively suppressing public knowledge of a federal corruption investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, related to information found on a Delaware laptop.

Yesterday, the computer store owner who turned the laptop over to federal investigators sued Twitter for defamation. Twitter’s ban was predicated on alleging the laptop containing “hacked” material, even though, as The Federalist documented, Twitter regularly allows the circulation of hacked and hoax information. The laptop owner says he did not hack it, he owns it, and that Twitter claiming otherwise has significantly damaged his reputation and employment.

In October, Twitter openly admitted it was pre-emptively choking the story on their platform even before deploying their Chinese- and Democrat-funded “fact-checking” organizations to explain away what are obviously politically motivated, selectively enforced, anti-truth information operations designed to help Democrats control the United States.

Twitter also pre-emptively blocked The New York Post’s subsequent reporting on its Hunter Biden laptop scoop, despite those containing additional corroborating details, and although witnesses and additional evidence also surfaced to independently corroborate the story. Twitter banned members of Congress and the president’s campaign from posting information about the story. It kept the Post locked out of its Twitter account for weeks following the breaking story in the run-up to the election.

Lest we all become too dulled to this successful attempt to control the nation without the people’s consent because we’re all used to leftists refusing fair play and equal treatment, we all need to remember that enough Biden voters to swing the election decisively to Trump said they would have changed their votes if they knew about this corruption story. Big tech bias is not a trivial issue. It is the difference between a fair election and a corrupted one, between self-rule and a corrupted oligarchy.

Evidence of Election Tampering and Errors

From May 2018 to October 2020, Twitter and Facebook restricted posts from President Trump at least 65 times, according to a media study. They did this precisely zero times to Joe Biden (or Hillary Clinton), and it’s not because he’s the most accurate politician alive.

In June, the anti-Trump bias ridiculously caused Twitter to put a warning label on an obvious parody video about a “racist baby.” More seriously, at the same time Twitter repeatedly throttled as “false” President Trump’s claims that mail-in ballots are an insecure voting method. That is absolutely true and it made the 2020 election ripe for fraud, abuse, and contested results.

On election night, Twitter flagged a post from President Trump that said: “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” Twitter claimed this was “disputed and might be misleading” and banned users from sharing the tweet. Later it was shown that Pennsylvania indeed counted post-election ballots against its own law forbidding that.

On Nov. 4, Twitter slapped a “warning label” about “disputed information” in a tweet from Federalist Cofounder Sean Davis, whose “offending” tweet accurately summarized the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling that ballots brought in after election day would be counted.

On Nov. 9, Twitter put a warning label on a quote from and link to an affidavit of sworn testimony alleging election fraud tweeted by Federalist Senior Contributor Ben Weingarten. “This claim about election fraud is disputed,” Twitter claimed, preventing people from retweeting it without adding their own comments. It later removed the choke without explanation.

In December, Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway explored the disqualifying errors in a “fact-check” done by one of Facebook’s partners of allegations of election fraud in Georgia. Facebook used the same fact-check she fisked to pre-emptively ban her article from its platform.

COVID-19

Big communications companies rabidly policed discussions about COVID-19 in 2020. Big tech seemed especially pouncy about information related to face masks. This included Amazon’s Nov. 24 ban of a book by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenstein’s book discussing the scientific evidence that mask mandates are ineffective.

It extended to repeated bans and chokes on Federalist content about masks, many by a supposed Facebook “fact check” that didn’t fact check any Federalist articles. It was just a generic fact check applied against anyone questioning the efficacy of cloth masks and generic mask mandates, even when such individuals cited scientific evidence from reputable sources.

Former White House Coronavirus Task Force advisor Dr. Scott Atlas was banned from publishing references to scientific studies on masks. CNN anchor Jake Tapper and CNN commentator Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a professor of neurosurgery, cheered Twitter on. Google-owned YouTube infamously pulled down a June interview of Atlas.

Weirdly, in April Facebook had blocked DIY cloth mask-making sites while banning the sale of medical-grade masks and sanitizer. Yet just a few months later Facebook’s blocking activities supported the use of makeshift masks made out of any material and blocked information, including from The Federalist, pointing out that all masks are not equally effective at virus and other particle filtering. Perhaps pointing out that research has found that gaiter-style or scarf masks actually may increase virus transmission may get this article banned too.

Social media bans on mask information from The Federalist included the well-read Oct. 29 article that quoted and linked to high-quality studies from reputable sources, “These 12 Graphs Show Mask Mandates Do Nothing To Stop COVID,” which was also throttled on LinkedIn.

YOU ALL MIGHT WANT TO TRY TWO NEWER SOCIAL MEDIA SITES. https://mewe.com/ and https://parler.com/

Spygate

In October, Twitter began publicly testing stronger information controls, which resulted in it warning users who tried to tweet a Federalist article breaking new information about the Spygate scandal. Spygate, of course, is the Obama administration’s documented and so far unpunished use of federal surveillance and policing powers to baselessly persecute, prosecute, and hamstring their political opponents.

The article Twitter impeded reported handwritten notes from Obama CIA Director John Brennan that showed President Obama was made aware months before the 2016 election that the Russian government may have been influencing Hillary Clinton’s false collusion smear against Donald Trump. Sean Davis reported more in that piece for The Federalist:

There is no evidence the FBI ever took any action to ensure that Russian knowledge of Clinton’s plans did not lead to infiltration of that campaign’s operation by Russian intelligence agents. The CIA referral, specifically its reference to a ‘CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell,’ suggests that the Obama administration’s anti-Trump investigation may not have been limited to the FBI, but may have included the use of CIA assets and surveillance capabilities, raising troubling questions about whether the nation’s top spy service was weaponized against a U.S. political campaign.

Seemingly Random Acts of Censorship

In September, Facebook employed abortionists to “fact-check” two videos from Live Action explaining why abortion is never medically necessary. Numerous obstetrics professionals and a national OB-GYN organization supported Live Action’s statement as accurate, but that didn’t matter to Facebook, which choked Live Action’s page.

In November, Instagram and Facebook’s sweeps caught up an innocent and completely apolitical local charity that used Facebook to coordinate donors and volunteers. Oathkeepers Causeplay may sound like it’s a conservative group, but it’s not (and even if it were, there’s nothing wrong with being conservative). It’s a group of people who dress up like TV and movie superheroes and other characters to cheer up disabled and sick children.

The act of random censorship hurt sick kids by depriving the charity of funds and volunteers. It also scared people away from associating with the charity — which, again, not only did nothing “wrong” but actively does good — out of fears they’d also lose their Facebook-mediated access to friendships and social activity. Good job, Facebook.

Also in October — see a pattern here? — Facebook users who searched for the Christian group Let Us Worship were given a warning message falsely claiming the group was affiliated with QAnon. “This is a peaceful movement from across the political spectrum and they are suppressing it by linking us to Q,” the group’s founder, Sean Feucht, told The Federalist. Facebook claimed the mislabeling was a glitch. Yet nobody shut down their traffic over their inaccurate statements despite the harm they caused others.

Again in October, Facebook demonetized the satire website Babylon Bee for making a Monty Python joke in a headline. Facebook claimed the Bee’s silly headline “Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch” “incited violence,” and refused to alter its decision after a review. In a self-parody that is impossible to top, Snopes and Twitter also frequently “fact-check” and throttle the clean satire site. I guess humor is now too conservative to allow.

It wasn’t just 2020, either. This has been going on for years. In fact, you might say Twitter, Google, Facebook, and others have been perfecting their ability to shut down non-leftist discourse and project public opinion cascades. In retrospect, earlier tech bans on speech look like dress rehearsals for the 2020 election bleep show.

In 2018, for example, The Federalist published a theologian’s story about how Facebook banned him from expressing Christian views about teaching young children about LGBT sex and gender identities. Earlier that year, Project Veritas released undercover video of a former Twitter employee verifying the company’s practice of “shadowbanning,” called that at the time because the practice was covert. In 2019, Google banned a conservative think tank from buying online advertising because a scholar affiliated with the think tank had critiqued multiculturalism.

Punishing the Conservative Base While Monetizing Them

Once a website’s content has begun to be flagged as “false” even if it is not, search engines and social media increasingly throttle traffic to the entire site, not just the flagged content. This further serves leftist information control by making publications reluctant to challenge what the unelected tech arbiters of reality have decided we must see and say. This means Google, Facebook, and Twitter ultimately don’t want you to see anything from The Federalist. They also hope you don’t notice.

“[S]tories from right-wing media outlets with false and misleading claims about discarded ballots, miscounted votes and skewed tallies were among the most popular news stories on” Facebook directly after the election, reported The New York Times. Facebook responded with deeper cuts into the reach of information from right-leaning outlets and greater amplification for articles from leftist media:

employees proposed an emergency change to the site’s news feed algorithm, which helps determine what more than two billion people see every day. It involved emphasizing the importance of what Facebook calls ‘news ecosystem quality’ scores, or N.E.Q., a secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.

…The change was part of the ‘break glass’ plans Facebook had spent months developing for the aftermath of a contested election.

Unnamed sources told the New York Times Facebook is working on ways to control information while still keeping users, and that the tools it has developed for this mostly affect right-leaning content. The company may also make permanent some information control mechanisms developed specifically for the 2020 election. But they have to be careful about this, the NYT reported, because when people notice the information control they stop using Facebook so much.

Right-leaning information is consistently among the most popular content on Facebook and YouTube. This means people who consume right-leaning information provide Facebook and Twitter millions of dollars because their time spent on site lures advertising. This allows Facebook to put competing information outlets out of business by siphoning away all advertising revenue while not paying for the content creation that draws the eyeballs, reinforcing their information monopolies.

Nice little racket. Tailor-made for people who don’t believe Americans ought to be allowed to make their own decisions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her newest ebook is “The Family Read-Aloud Advent Calendar,” and her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” A Hillsdale College honors graduate, @JoyPullmann is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.

Photo Timothy Krause / Flickr

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Daily Beast: Isn’t It Odd That The Hunter Biden Money-Laundering Probe Went “Largely Unnoticed” Until Now?

Reported by ED MORRISSEY | Posted at 11:15 am on December 10, 2020

“Largely unnoticed,” purposely ignored, or actively suppressed? The Daily Beast’s reporting team on Hunter Biden’s legal woes sound somewhat surprised that the FBI’s money-laundering probe didn’t get noticed before the election:

The Justice Department’s announcement on Wednesday that it was investigating Hunter Biden, for what he deemed to be “tax affairs,” took root several years ago with a much broader inquiry that included possible money laundering, according to a report by CNN.

That inquiry reportedly fizzled, leading instead to a probe on tax matters that is now being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware. But evidence of the larger probe was apparent in the markings on a series of documents that were made public—but went largely unnoticed—in the days leading up to the November election, according to two individuals familiar with the matter.

The word “unnoticed” is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in this sentence. Not only did it get noticed, it got reported by Sinclair TV’s James Rosen a few days before the election. A large number of online outlets — mostly conservative — picked up on Rosen’s report about the FBI’s criminal probe of Hunter Biden, including us. Rosen reported that Tony Bobulinski had cooperated in the probe, and that its focus was money laundering:

A U.S. Justice Department official has confirmed to Sinclair Broadcast Group that a 2019 FBI investigation into Hunter Biden, son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, is still active.

The 2019 criminal investigation looks into Hunter and his associates on allegations of money-laundering.

Sinclair investigative reporter James Rosen spoke with a central witness in these allegations, who suggested that former vice president Joe Biden knew more than he has acknowledged about his son’s overseas dealings.

That witness was Bobulinski, who went public about Hunter’s business dealings after the Biden campaign tried sloughing him off as a malcontent business partner. Rosen himself addressed this last night:

This didn’t go “largely unnoticed.” It was widely noticed, everywhere except in the mainstream media. Why? It started with the New York Post exposé of Hunter’s laptop, which Biden’s team claimed was Russian disinformation and social media platforms actively suppressed:

MacIsaac also said he copied the contents of one of the laptops for Giuliani. And, sure enough, those contents quickly made their way to conservative media personalities and outlets. Giuliani and others, including Steve Bannon, appeared on network television, stirring conspiracy theories and pushing unsubstantiated claims about Hunter’s overseas business dealings.

One of the main outlets pushing emails and pictures from the hard drive was the New York Post. And for one of its stories, the paper published what appeared to be federal law enforcement documents given to MacIsaac in return for his handing over the Biden laptops.

One of those documents—from the FBI— included a case number that had the code associated with an ongoing federal money laundering investigation in Delaware, according to several law enforcement officials who reviewed the document. Another document—one with a grand jury subpoena number—appeared to show the initials of two assistant U.S. attorneys linked to the Wilmington, Delaware, office.

Gee — you mean if media outlets had actually checked the details, they might have found a real story about corruption around Joe Biden? As in, acting like real journalistic organizations and speaking truth to power? The deuce you say. The excuse in this article for failing to report on this — even with Rosen’s report already made public — was that law enforcement wouldn’t comment and the Biden team stonewalled the Daily Beast. But the documents themselves apparently left that very big clue two months ago that they’re reporting …. now.

[Update: That’s too harsh in regard to the Daily Beast, actually. They did try to follow up. That puts them head and shoulders above other media outlets … like, for instance …]

As Glenn Greenwald says — memories …

It’s not just media outlets that should get the heat, either. Twitter and Facebook actively suppressed the New York Post article — and the New York Post itself — for days. Democrats called it Russian disinformation, and both Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey nearly twisted their ankles in a rush to suppress it. Now, and only after Hunter Biden issued a press release acknowledging the accuracy of Rosen’s reporting, have all of these “institutions” suddenly cured their myopia.

The clear conclusion is that the national media didn’t want to report anything detrimental to Joe Biden, no matter how accurate it might have been. Now that the election is over, they’ll tell their readers and viewers that the story went “largely unnoticed” [see update above as to TDB, which did at least notice it] as a passive-voice dodge to avoid responsibility for their active decision to ignore and in some cases suppress it. It’s an utter disgrace.

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon Extended – Payback

A.F. BRANCO | on November 19, 2020 at 3:43 pm | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-extended-payback/

The left-wing radicals helped get Joe Biden elected and now they want payback as in administration positions.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Free Speech Ass-sassin

A.F. BRANCO | on November 20, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-free-speech-ass-sassin/

Democrats are willing to use leftist big tech to kill the free speech of conservative news organizations.

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Science As God: Tech Hearing And COVID Show Us Exactly Where Censorship Is Headed

NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | By Christopher Bedford

In all the back and forth of Tuesday’s Big Tech hearing, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons’ exchange with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey stood out most starkly, offering a window into the next step of the left’s long-championed Big Tech censorship of scientific dissent from liberal orthodoxy.

“You do, Mr. Dorsey, have policies against deep fakes or manipulated media, against Covid-19 misinformation, against things that violate civic integrity,” the Delaware senator began, “but you don’t have a standalone climate change misinformation policy. Why not?”

“Our policies are living documents,”Dorsey replied. “They will evolve, we will add to them, but we thought it important we focus our energies and prioritize the work as much as we could.” And then:

Well, Mr. Dorsey… I cannot think of a greater harm than climate change, which is transforming literally our planet and causing harm to our entire world. I think we’re experiencing significant harm as we speak. I recognize the pandemic and misinformation about Covid-19 manipulated media also cause harm but I’d urge you to reconsider that because helping to disseminate climate denialism in my view further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world.

This has been ongoing for years in corporate media. In 2019, Chuck Todd pompously announced his show would no longer “give time to climate deniers.” Two years before that, when The New York Times’ Bret Stephens used his debut column to call out “The Climate of Complete Certainty” that seeks to shut down completely reasonable dissent, the paper faced vicious backlash labeling Stephens a “climate denier.” For more than a decade before this, more of the same — often trickling up, from activists to the reporters who sympathize to the powers that can truly silence voices.

Four years ago, reporters demanded then-President Barack censor fake news, pushing Press Secretary Josh Earnest into the awkward position of having to remind apparent journalists of the First Amendment four times. The targets that day were the Bat Boy-like farces they blamed for Her 2016 loss, but it was already obvious the definition of “fake news” would rapidly expand. Once President Donald Trump assumed office, corporate media and allied politicians bypassed the White House and turned to Silicon Valley, which fell in line quickly enough.

COVID-19 provided the first preview of the new alliance, where even doctors and scientists were censored for carefully — we once said “scientifically” — questioning the alarmists’ narrative of the day. At the same time, Democrats, corporate media, and even corrupt, foreign bodies like the World Health Organization have been permitted to push whatever information supports that day’s goal post.

Completely rational appeals are met with absurdities like “the science is decided,” as if constantly evolving experimentation in search of knowledge can be bottled into some oracle-like decree to support the mob’s latest demand. Rather than decided science, these decrees are mere hypotheses susceptible to support and opposition, but through the alliance of Democrats, corporate media, and Silicon Valley, they become unquestionable edicts ranging from No Business to Eternal Mask-Wearing to No Family For Thanksgiving.

Coons’s comments are a good reminder that what is COVID today is climate tomorrow. Indeed, COVID policy has offered Americans a perfect preview of what will happen if climate alarmists get their way: Science not as method, but as god. And not the strong and mysterious God of the Jewish and Christian faiths, but a shifting one, whose every dictum and desire is whispered to the kings and enforced at their whims.

Do you have a problem with that? You can take it up with The Science. And The Science is decided.

Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, the vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at the National Journalism Center, and the author of The Art of the Donald. Follow him on Twitter.

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Report: Facebook Hires Chinese Nationals to Censor Platform

Reported by LUCAS NOLAN | 21 Oct 2020

Chinese President Xi Jinping, centre, talks with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, right, as Lu Wei, left, China’s Internet czar, looks on at Microsoft’s main campus in 2015 / TED S. WARREN/AFP

A recent report from the New York Post claims that Facebook has hired Chinese nationals who are “working on censorship,” at the company. China famously employs the “Great Chinese Firewall” to block many websites within the communist country, including Facebook.

The New York Post reports that a Facebook Insider told the publication that at least half a dozen “Chinese nationals who are working on censorship,” are employed at Facebook. The insider told the Post: “So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.’ ”

The insider provided the Post with an internal directory of the team that does much of the censorship work at Facebook. According to the Post, the job is referred to as “Hate-Speech Engineering” and most of its members are based out of Facebook’s Seattle offices. Many of those working there have Ph.D.s, and their work involves machine learning and AI.

At Facebook, this mainly pertains to teaching the Facebook algorithm to manage what content shows up in users’ newsfeeds. The Facebook insider states that this means making sure certain content “shows up dead-last.” The insider used New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari as an example of an average Facebook user, stating: “They take what Sohrab sees, and then they throw the newsfeed list into a machine-learning algorithm and neural networks that determine the ranking of the items.”

Facebook engineers reportedly test hundreds of different iterations of the rankings to determine an optimal outcome and remove what top executives refer to as “borderline content.” The insider stated: “What they don’t do is ban a specific pro-Trump hashtag. Content that is a little too conservative, they will down-rank. You can’t tell it’s censored.”

The Post notes that the employees on Facebook’s Hate-Speech Engineering team earned their degrees from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Jilin University in northeast China, and Nanjing University in eastern China. Another engineer reportedly worked for Huawei, a company that has been labeled a security threat by the U.S. and Sweden.

The idea of one of America’s most powerful companies using Chinese censorship experts is troubling for reasons beyond the obvious. The Chinese nationals could be in a position to spy on both the company and its users. The National Security blog Lawfare notes that Chinese intelligence law allows the country to deputized any of its citizens into doing intelligence work such as acquiring data. Lawfare writes:

Article Seven stipulates that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.” Article 14, in turn, grants intelligence agencies authority to insist on this support: “state intelligence work organs, when legally carrying forth intelligence work, may demand that concerned organs, organizations, or citizens provide needed support, assistance, and cooperation.” Organizations and citizens must also protect the secrecy of “any state intelligence work secrets of which they are aware.” These clauses appear to limit the obligations on individuals to Chinese citizens, but they do not stipulate that only Chinese “organizations” are subject to these requirements.

A Facebook spokesperson denied that these employees influence the site’s broad policies, stating: “We are a stronger company because our employees come from all over the world. Our standards and policies are public, including about our third-party fact-checking program, and designed to apply equally to content across the political spectrum. With over 35,000 people working on safety and security issues at Facebook, the insinuation that these employees have an outsized influence on our broader policies or technology is absurd.”

Read more about Facebook’s recent censorship scandals at Breitbart News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

Written

on July 30, 2020

Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter Censor Viral Video of Doctors’ Capitol Hill Coronavirus Press Conference

Reported by ALLUM BOKHARI | 27 Jul 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/27/facebook-censors-viral-video-of-doctors-capitol-hill-coronavirus-press-conference/

Facebook has removed a video posted by Breitbart News earlier today, which was the top-performing Facebook post in the world Monday afternoon, of a press conference in D.C. held by the group America’s Frontline Doctors and organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. The press conference featured Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and frontline doctors sharing their views and opinions on coronavirus and the medical response to the pandemic. YouTube (which is owned by Google) and Twitter subsequently removed footage of the press conference as well.

video source: Matt PerdieThe video accumulated over 17 million views during the eight hours it was hosted on Facebook, with over 185,000 concurrent viewers.

The livestream had accumulated over 17 million views by the time of its censorship by Facebook.

In terms of viral velocity, the post was beating content from many other prominent accounts on Facebook today, including Hillary Clinton, Rev. Franklin Graham, and Kim Kardashian.

Over 185,000 viewers were concurrently watching the stream when it aired live Monday afternoon.

The event, hosted by the organization America’s Frontline Doctors, a group founded by Dr. Simone Gold, a board-certified physician and attorney, and made up of medical doctors, came together to address what the group calls a “massive disinformation campaign” about the coronavirus. Norman also spoke at the event.

“If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease,” reads the event’s information page.

The event was organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.

“We’ve removed this video for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19,” a Facebook company spokesman, Andy Stone, told Breitbart News. The company did not specify what portion of the video it ruled to be “false information,” who it consulted to make that ruling, and on what basis it was made.

Stone replied to New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose on Twitter regarding the video:

Stone then added that the platform would direct users who had interacted with the post to information on “myths debunked by the WHO.”

Facebook’s decision to censor the livestream was quickly followed by YouTube, the Google-owned video-sharing platform. The video had over 80,000 views on YouTube prior to its removal.

Following Facebook and YouTube’s removal of the video, Twitter followed suit, removing Breitbart News’s Periscope livestream of the press conference. Jack Dorsey’s platform also then limited the Breitbart News official account, indicating that tweets containing links to multiple stories about the press conference violate the platform’s COVID-19 policies.

Twitter limits Breitbart News account

Are you an insider at Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His book #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election is out in September.

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Project Veritas Undercover Video: Facebook Content Moderator: ‘If Someone is Wearing a MAGA Hat, I Am Going to Delete Them For Terrorism’

Reported By Cristina Laila | Published June 23, 2020 at 10:47am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/project-veritas-undercover-video-facebook-content-moderator-someone-wearing-maga-hat-going-delete-terrorism/

James O’Keefe strikes again!

Project Veritas on Tuesday released undercover videos documenting rampant anti-Trump bias at Facebook.

Facebook insider Zach McElroy told Project Veritas that he’s willing to testify before Congress about the Facebook bias he witnessed against Trump supporters and conservative causes.

’75-to-80 percent of Posts Selected by Facebook’s Algorithm for Moderator Review Support President Donald Trump, Republicans and Conservative Causes’ says McElroy.

Facebook content moderators were caught on hidden camera admitting they hate President Trump.

‘We gotta get the Cheeto out of office’ one moderator said.

Another content moderator laughed and said she deletes every pro-Trump post because she ‘gives no f*cks.’

Via Project Veritas:

One of the content moderators was asked if she deleted every Republican item that came up on her queue, she said: “Yes! I don’t give no f*cks, I’ll delete it.”

The same moderator said she does not take down anti-Trump content, even if it did not violate policy.

“You gotta take it down but I leave it up,” she said. “If you see something that’s not supposed to be up, it’s probably me.”

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Another content moderator, Lara Kontakos, was asked what she did when she saw a posts supporting the president: “If someone is wearing a MAGA hat, I am going to delete them for terrorism.”

Then, Kontakos looked around at her colleagues: “I think we are all doing that.”

WATCH:

You can support James O’Keefe and Project Veritas by clicking here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cristina Laila

Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.

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Facebook Deletes One of the Largest Donald Trump Facebook Fan Pages with 3,276,000 Fans!

Posted by FreedomHeadlins.com | Friday, October 18, 2019

URL of the original posting site: https://freedomheadlines.com/the-latest/facebook-deletes-one-of-the-largest-donald-trump-facebook-fan-pages-with-3276000-fans/

Facebook is stepping up their game to try and prevent Donald Trump from winning reelection. They are quite literally meddling in the election process by using their influence and reach to censor the internet and prevent people with opposing views from sharing anything from a conservative viewpoint.

The social network giant just removed one of the largest (if not the largest) pro-Trump Facebook fan pages.

They cited that it was because, “It looks like recent activity on your Page doesn’t follow the Facebook Page Policies regarding impersonation and pretending to be an individual or business.”

According to their Instagram Page,

“Donald Trump Us Our President” With 3,276,000 Fans, Which We Paid FB Around $100,000 To Build, Using ‘Page Like Ads’ Was Removed Yesterday. Please Help Me Spread The Word So We Can Help Facebook Know And Fix, What I Am Sure Is A Honest Mistake.

I Have Made My Identity Perfectly Clear, I Am, In No Way Associated With President Donald J. Trump, Nor Have I Ever Claimed To Be. This Was/Is A Fan Page, We Make That Abundantly Clear In Many Places On The Page.

On Top Of That Facebook Approved The Name Change Back In 2016 …. So Why Now, All Of A Sudden Has My Life’s Work Been ‘Unpublished.’ I’m Sure This Is A Mistake, But Please Help Me Alert FB So We Can Get This Cleared Up, Thank You! – Mark Sidney

View this post on Instagram

So Facebook Unpublished, What I Believe To Be, The Largest Donald J. Trump Fan Page Yesterday. Our Page, 'Donald Trump Us Our President" With 3,276,000 Fans, Which We Paid FB Around $100,000 To Build, Using 'Page Like Ads' Was Removed Yesterday. Please Help Me Spread The Word So We Can Help Facebook Know And Fix, What I Am Sure Is A Honest Mistake. I Have Made My Identity Perfectly Clear, I Am, In No Way Associated With President Donald J. Trump, Nor Have I Ever Claimed To Be. This Was/Is A Fan Page, We Make That Abundantly Clear In Many Places On The Page. On Top Of That Facebook Approved The Name Change Back In 2016 …. So Why Now, All Of A Sudden Has My Life's Work Been 'Unpublished.' I'm Sure This Is A Mistake, But Please Help Me Alert FB So We Can Get This Cleared Up, Thank You! – Mark Sidney

A post shared by Donald Trump Is Our President (@donaldtrump_is_our_president) on Oct 12, 2019 at 8:36am PDT

In what way does the title, “Donald Trump Is Our President” violate these terms? How does simply saying that suggest that he/she/it/they are Donald Trump?

It doesn’t and it’s ridiculous.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Sick Willie

A.F. Branco | on July 11, 2019 at 7:40 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-sick-willie/

While the media tried to weave a sleazy fake-news Trump connection to Epstein they totally play down the Bill Clinton/Epstein meetings and plane rides over the years.

See more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, click here.

An adult children’s Book for all ages APOCALI NOW! brilliantly lampoons the left order HERE

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $10 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, the great El Rushbo, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Heavyweights

A.F. Branco | on July 12, 2019 at 7:40 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-heavyweights/

Social media giants appear to have their thumbs on the scale of Right vs Left freedom of speech in hopes of tilting the balance in the Democrats favor this 2020 election.

More A.F. Branco Cartoons at The Daily Torch.

Branco’s Faux Children’s Book “APOCALI” ORDER HERE

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $10 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. – THANK YOU!

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Which Democrat Presidential Hopeful Has The Wildest Campaign Promise So Far?

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, the great El Rushbo, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

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The Jackasses At Facebook Just Got Some BAD Anti-Trust News – Here’s The 411

Written by K. Walker on June 4, 2019

URL of the original posting site: https://clashdaily.com/2019/06/the-jackasses-at-facebook-just-got-some-bad-anti-trust-news-heres-the-411/

Mark Zuckerberg can’t be happy about this development.

The Federal Trade Commission has secured the rights to investigate Facebook Inc for possible “unlawful monopolistic behavior.” This is in addition to the current FTC investigation into possible privacy violations committed by Facebook Inc.

Facebook isn’t alone, though. The Justice Department would oversee an investigation into Google and Apple for “anti-competitive practices.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will lead an antitrust investigation into how Facebook Inc’s practices affect its digital competition as part of an arrangement that would give the Justice Department control over possible Google and Apple probes, news of which caused stock prices to tumble on Monday, wiping more than $149.4 billion off the value of some of America’s biggest technology firms.

The FTC and the Justice Department both oversee antitrust issues in the U.S. and must establish who will take the lead in different investigations into competitive practices.

On Monday, after news of the possible investigations was made known, stock prices dropped for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, as well as for Apple Inc, Amazon, and Facebook Inc, which took the biggest nosedive with shares dropping 9.3 percent throughout the day.

U.S. antitrust regulators have divided oversight of Amazon.com Inc and Google, putting Amazon under the watch of the FTC, led by Chairman Joseph Simons, and Google under the Justice Department, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The DOJ has also landed control over any potential review of Apple, which exerts considerable dominance in the app development space.

The FTC and DOJ dividing up responsibility for examination of the entities doesn’t guarantee investigation, but does set the stage should the government choose to proceed with a review.
Source: Daily Mail

It’s quite something that Sen. Elizabeth Warren is running on the “Break up Big Tech” platform while the FTC and DOJ of the current administration are paving the way for investigations to see if that does indeed need to be done.

I am no fan of Facebook after seeing how the company has abused access to users’ private information for their own profit, continues to allow terrorist organizations to openly post on their platforms while censoring conservatives, and how they’ve bullied their way into cornering the market by buying out competitors. Not to mention the Jekyll/Hyde persona of wanting to be both a “neutral platform” and a publisher able to make editorial decisions.

I say break them up into a hundred million pieces.

Let us know what you think in the comments or on MeWe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

K. Walker

ClashDaily’s Associate Editor since August 2016. Self-described political junkie, anti-Third Wave Feminist, and a nightmare to the ‘intersectional’ crowd. Mrs. Walker has taken a stand against ‘white privilege’ education in public schools. She’s also an amateur Playwright, occasional Drama teacher, and staunch defender of the Oxford comma. Follow her humble musings on Twitter: @TheMrsKnowItAll

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Why is Facebook Targeting Conservative History-based Sites?

Posted by Leslie Eastman Saturday, April 6, 2019 at 6:00pm

URL of the original posting site: https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/04/why-is-facebook-targeting-conservative-history-based-sites/

Donald Trump, Jr. took Facebook to task in a recent article, and the censorship may be worse than even he thought

Legal Insurrection readers are acutely aware of the deplatforming and silencing of conservative voices across social media and via outlets like Amazon.

The latest victim to get slammed by the iron-hand of Big Tech is President Trump’s chief social media guru, Dan Scavino. Facebook blocked his account for simply responding to a question from a reader.

The excuse was that his remark seemed like spam.

Scavino is responsible for several of the president’s and White House’s social media accounts. He has been with the president for years.

His accounts have a tremendous following, so a block on Facebook has a big reach. Already there are over 750 comments on his page, including:

“Cory Critser Dan Scavino Daniel Scavino Jr. … I think it’s time for some Senate hearings with Facebook on there attempts to influence the election.”

On a smaller scale, my personal website (Temple of Mut) was temporarily blocked from being linked in Facebook. The reason I was given: The website did not meet community standards.

True . . . if your community consists merely of climate-change cultists and gender justice warriors. However, Facebook is supposed to be playing by the rules of a platform and not a publisher, so my science-based and news-focused content should be acceptable under any reasonable standard.

Additionally, the Canto Talk Show program that I help host on occasion was also hit with a Facebook ban. Silvio Canto, the mild-mannered, thoughtful host and author of historic, sports, and political analysis was deeply troubled when his show promotion posts were deemed “inappropriate.”

I am very angry. It took me several hours to calm down. They banned posts on World War II and baseball.What is offensive about that. Was it because I actually called Hitler “Hitler” instead of Trump? And my baseball piece was about Hank Aaron. How is that not appropriate? [transcript provided by author]

Barry Jacobson, a former Green Beret who fought to defend the Constitution (including his First Amendment rights), was also impacted by Facebook censorship. The social media giant recently stopped the promotion of his military history podcasts.

That Facebook deems discussion of WW-2 “in violation of community standards” is not only astonishing; it begs the question, what standard are they upholding? Ignorance? Put another way, is the banning of all discussion of the horrors caused by the Nazis somehow going to further the cause (which I assume Facebook supports) of hindering the spread of Nazi ideology?

I suspect that Facebook has tweaked its algorithms in such a way that anything even mildly conservative is now flagged. Donald Trump, Jr. recently published a detailed piece decrying Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives, which has steadily become more flagrant and overt.

Facebook appears to have deliberately tailored its algorithm to recognize the syntax and style popular among conservatives in order to “deboost” that content. “Mainstream media,” “SJW” (Social Justice Warrior) and “red pill” — all terms that conservatives often use to express themselves — were listed as red flags, according to the former Facebook insider.

Facebook engineers even cited BlazeTV host Lauren Chen’s video criticizing the social justice movement as an example of the kind of “red pills” that users just aren’t allowed to drop anymore. Mainstream conservative content was strangled in real time, yet fringe leftists such as the Young Turks enjoy free rein on the social media platform.

I would argue that the situation is even worse than the president’s son has stated if history-based blogs are now being silenced.

For those of you interested, listen to this Canto Talk podcast reviewing the current status of the Battle against Big Tech.

https://percolate.blogtalkradio.com/offsiteplayer?hostId=4735&episodeId=11250737

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Armed with Assault Rifles, Black Panthers March for Stacey Abrams

Reported By Jason Hopkins | November 4, 2018 at 10:11am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/black-panthers-march-stacey-abrams/

Members of the Black Panther Party marched through the city of Atlanta, strapped with assault rifles and brandishing Stacey Abrams campaign signs. In a video posted on the group’s Facebook page on Saturday, members of the Black Panther Party are seen marching through the West End neighborhood of Atlanta in support of Stacey Abrams gubernatorial campaign. As they marched, the Black Panthers carried assault rifles and continually shouted slogans such as “black power” and “power to the people.”

The video shows the panthers marching for nearly 30 minutes through the city of Atlanta until they enter a local radio station.

When reached for comment by The Daily Caller News Foundation, the Abrams campaign forwarded a statement from spokeswoman Abigail Collazo. Her statement did not specifically address the Panthers’ march, but instead attacked Kemp.

“Brian Kemp is the only candidate in this race who has posed for pictures with supporters wearing racist, hate-filled t-shirts and refused to denounce them, while Abrams continues to condemn any racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise discriminatory words and actions,” Collazo said.

“Unlike Kemp, Abrams is a leader committed to running an inclusive campaign focused on bringing all Georgians together to find bold solutions on critical issues like health care, education, and the economy,” she continued.

At one point during the march, someone driving a vehicle stopped momentarily to speak to the Panthers.

One of the members can be heard saying afterward: “You need to march in your neighborhood. When we was (sic) in West Virginia, 99 percent crackers, stone cold crackers.”

Kemp’s campaign called on Abrams to immediately denounce the Black Panthers.

“It’s no surprise that militant Black Panthers are armed and patrolling the streets of Georgia for Stacey Abrams. The Black Panthers are a radical hate group with a racist and anti-semitic agenda. They are dangerous and encourage violence against our men and women in uniform,” Kemp spokesman Ryan Mahoney said in a statement to TheDCNF.

“Stacey Abrams should immediately denounce the Black Panthers and their hateful record of racism,” he continued. “She should stand against and condemn their attempts to intimidate hardworking Georgia voters just days before the election.”

The close race has brought star power from both sides of the aisle. Vice President Mike Pence campaigned for Kemp on Thursday — the same day Oprah Winfrey knocked on doors on behalf of Abrams.

The Panthers did not respond to a request for comment by TheDCNF.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

The Daily Caller News Foundation

Founded by Tucker Carlson, a 25-year veteran of print and broadcast media, and Neil Patel, former chief policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, The Daily Caller News Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit providing original investigative reporting from a team of professional reporters that operates for the public benefit.

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Facebook Just Silenced Political Speech In America. And No One Seems To Care.

Reported By Shaun Hair and Randy DeSoto | October 19, 2018 at 2:07pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/facebook-silences-political-speech/

Facebook Hates Freedom

Early on October 11, Matt woke up to find his small business gone. There had been no warning, no smoke, no heat — but his business was now a smoldering heap of ash. Facebook had burnt it to the ground.

Matt has operated his small digital publishing business since 2015. He spends his mornings like most business proprietors: After waking up, he reviews his numbers and checks messages to ensure his livelihood is running smoothly and as expected. It’s undoubtedly a more peaceful existence than Matt’s years in Army intelligence. His time in the military left him disabled, so his ability to work at least part of the time from his computer is a blessing.

It’s a good day for Matt when numbers are up and messages are down. As is usually the case for young entrepreneurs, no news is good news, because that means there are no fires to put out. But on October 11, Matt woke to the fire of his nightmares.

Matt is an online publisher. His business depends on his ability to drive page views to his website. Like many in the mid 2010s, Matt found Facebook to be good place to share articles and keep people coming back day after day. In those early days, growing Facebook pages was much easier. And getting more people to follow his Facebook page meant more people would see his articles.

Matt uses his website to tell stories about the thing that is most important to him — American politics. And his rise in online popularity proved he was not alone in his views. His activism mixed with his tough guy persona — “Do I look like a snowflake?” is his slogan on Twitter where he goes by “Matt Mountain” — resonated with many on Facebook. By last week, Matt had amassed an impressive 1.8 million Facebook followers on his pages.

But in a moment and without warning, Facebook took them all away.

On this fall morning, as Matt began his early-morning check of his site, he was greeted with a notification from his Facebook app that read simply, “account disabled.” He was obviously worried, so he immediately called his wife, who helps run the site, and asked her if she could access her Facebook account. She could not.

Facebook had unpublished all of Matt’s pages. Every page was inaccessible — effectively wiped from existence. The 1.8 million followers Matt had worked to connect with were no longer a click away. The 1.8 million followers who over the last three years had chosen to follow Matt’s site could no longer read the stories they loved or comment on the page with their friends about what mattered to them.

Matt checked his records. He had received nothing from Facebook. No warning. No deadline. No ultimatum. With two simple words, many years and countless hours of Matt’s work were forever wiped from Facebook.

While Matt was scrambling to figure out what had happened, Facebook was announcing through a blog post that it had removed over 559 political pages and 251 accounts in a clampdown on what the company calls “inauthentic behavior” in the lead-up to the U.S midterm elections.

“Many were using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names and posted massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages to drive traffic to their websites. Many used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it really was,” wrote Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, and product manager Oscar Rodriguez.

Facebook’s pre-midterm purge included pages and accounts that Facebook described as “ad farms” that used the platform to earn money and “to mislead others about who they are, and what they are doing,” rather than engage in “legitimate political debate.”

It appears that Facebook had strategically briefed The New York Times and The Washington Post ahead of the removals, given that within minutes of Facebook’s announcement, both papers published lengthy pieces describing the purge that included screenshots of the pages, something that could only have been obtained before the pages were removed.

After the purge, Facebook provided media outlets with only the same few examples: The Resistance, Reasonable People Unite, Reverb Press, Nation in Distress and Snowflakes. Four of these pages were liberal, while one was conservative. When asked for a complete list of pages, Facebook has repeatedly refused to release it. Even knowing the names of these five pages, journalists visiting the page are greeted with a message “Sorry, content isn’t available right now,” with no ability to see the page, previously posted content or examples of alleged “spam” actions.

Facebook claims the purged pages fell on both sides of the political spectrum, and originally declined to say if there were more pages on the right or the left, but a Facebook spokesperson later told Axios that “the takedowns may have impacted more right-leaning hyper-partisan Pages.”

Because Facebook has refused to release a full list of the affected pages or any proof of alleged “spam” activity, The Western Journal has attempted to track down as many of the purged pages as possible.

Starting with the sparse list of pages that Facebook chose to release to media outlets and pages mentioned by individuals on social media, The Western Journal searched on Google which domains were most often shared by those pages. The Western Journal then found other sites with common Adsense and Google Analytics accounts. These domains were then searched on on Google’s cache of Facebook to locate pages that shared links from that site. Pages which showed the message “Sorry, content isn’t available right now,” a sign that the pages had been unpublished, rather than completely deleted, were added to The Western Journal’s list.

That list of pages confirmed as having been taken down by Facebook is now totaling 220. Of the 220 pages uncovered by The Western Journal, 67 percent are conservative or pro-Trump pages, 22 percent are libertarian or non-aligned, and 11 percent are liberal or anti-Trump pages.

Additionally, among the 147 conservative pages taken down, 26 specifically mention President Donald Trump or related topics like “MAGA,” “deplorables” or first lady Melania Trump.

Brian Kolfage, who ran Right Wing News’ Facebook page, sees the company’s purge of political sites as part of a “war on conservatives and a war on Trump.”

“It’s not by mistake, this happened weeks before the midterms,” contends the Air Force veteran, who was severely wounded while serving in Iraq.

“People are being punished for their simple beliefs — beliefs of freedom, beliefs of religion, beliefs on anything that differs from that status quo. If you have an alternate view, you’re attacked — physically, financially and socially,” he says.

“Now, it’s me, my family, and my young children in the line of fire,” Kolfage adds. “This isn’t the right to free speech I gave my legs and arm to defend. Three limbs wasn’t enough for some … now my livelihood is gone with it.”

Kolfage tells The Western Journal that he was in regular contact with Facebook, but was not told his page was out of compliance with the company’s rules before the purge.

Kurt Von Arnold, whose page IPhoneConservative (70,000 likes) was also a casualty of the purge, explained to The Western Journal that when he consulted with fellow page owners, a common thread emerged about Facebook’s actions.

“In the lead up to this coordinated removal of conservative pages, going back months before, all of us were required to verify our accounts and locations,” says Von Arnold. “This involved, under their direction, logging out of our accounts and then re-logging in using a code they provided, for each device used to access their platform.”

Von Arnold argues this drill was really a “Trojan Horse” to allow Facebook both to efficiently take down their sites and to prevent them from starting new ones from any of their known devices. He recounted that after his page was taken down Thursday, he published a new one.

“Within a few hours I had a couple of hundred page likes and though the loss of my 70k audience that I had built up over 10 years organically, never paying for boosts or spamming or ad-farming or any of the other tactics FB claimed it was acting against hurt very much,” says Von Arnold. “I consoled myself that I was back in the fight and with hard work I could build that audience again.”

“That was a fundamental mistake,” Von Arnold added with a sarcastic tone. “The new page which was starting to move suddenly went dead. All interaction on posts ceased, post reach went to 1 or 2 people in each post.”

Facebook has been unresponsive to the Von Arnold’s request for assistance.

“This is malicious harassment and a form of gaslighting which I wouldn’t wish on my worst political enemy,” Von Arnold argues. “Moreover it is proof positive, at least in my mind, of the persistent animus FB has shown to conservative pages on their platform.”

“I cherish the freedoms that have been bought so dearly,” he concludes. “I wanted to voice my concerns that those freedoms were becoming increasingly endangered. I started a page to give voice to those concerns and allow other to find their voice and Facebook punished me for it.”

Facebook’s purge of pages was not limited to last Thursday.

BJ Zeagler tells The Western Journal that her page, Donald J. Trump — President of the People, was taken down three weeks ago. (Because it had been affected before October 11, her page was not included in the previously mentioned list.)

Zeagler emphatically denies committing any violations that Facebook listed in its blog post last Thursday. The 74-year-old Nashville resident only ran one page, on which she posted articles from different sites, not owned by her. In other words, she made no money from her postings. The Tennessean had built up 2,000 likes over the last 10 years, originally starting her page in 2008 as a pro-retired Lt. Col. Allen West page, in hopes he would one day run for president.

“It was a really good page. I worked hours on it (each day),” Zeagler explains. “I did what I did because I loved this country.”

She posted articles from sources that she trusted like conservative talk radio personalities Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Sean Hannity.

“It was really sad to me. They removed by page,” she laments. “They removed the names of everybody that was coming there. They don’t know how to reach me. I don’t know how to reach them. It was dirty, and they didn’t tell me they were going to do it.”

The Times reported that concern over Facebook’s political bias against conservatives inspired Brian Amerige, a senior engineer with the company, to write a post to his co-workers in August.

“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,” he wrote. “We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.”

“We are entrusted by a great part of the world to be impartial and transparent carriers of people’s stories, ideas and commentary,” Amerige added. “Congress doesn’t think we can do this. The president doesn’t think we can do this. And like them or not, we deserve that criticism.”

The Times related that since the engineer’s post went up more than 100 Facebook employees had joined him to form an online group called ‘FB’ers for Political Diversity,’ based on two people within the company who had seen the page, but were not authorized to talk to the media.

The day before Facebook announced its purge, The Business Insider reported that Ameriage had left the company.

“I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that’s how I know it’s time to go,” he wrote in a memo to his fellow employees, announcing his departure.

Patrick Brown, editor-in-chief of The Western Journal, has called on Facebook to release the full list of the pages it has unpublished.

“If Facebook is deleting American-run political pages in run up to election, Facebook should release full list of pages affected, regardless if these pages were violating terms of service or not. Without that list we have no way to verify their claims,” he tweeted.

Although it is clear many of these page owners did violate Facebook’s prohibition against using multiple accounts, many of the owners say that once they were told it was a problem, they immediately stopped using those accounts and verified their single remaining accounts with Facebook. The owners also shared a similar complaint — that Facebook never told them that they had done anything so egregious as to have years of their work literally erased with no warning and little more than a vague, one-sentence explanation that raised more questions than it answered.

Even Facebook’s recent “war room” announcement referenced the company’s efforts to increase “accountability and transparency.” But the company has still yet to release more than 5 of the 559 pages that were purged.

The majority of the known pages suspended by Facebook were right-leaning. While there may be valid justification for all of Facebook’s actions, Facebook has not responded to The Western Journal’s request for comment or provided to any known media outlet a full list of suspended pages or any evidence that any of the pages had in fact violated any of the rules Facebook claims were the basis for their purge. And to date, neither The Times nor The Post, the two papers who received the early scoop of the purge along with the five examples of purged pages, have called for the entire list to be made public.

Facebook’s refusal to release the whole list or any proof of any violation of terms of service has many questioning if Facebook is being honest about its intentions.

Rhett Jones with Gizmodo noted, “the fact that Facebook is keeping almost all of the details about this action under wraps may save it some short-term pain, but it just gives everyone’s imagination the chance to run wild.”

Back at his computer, Matt Mountain is trying to make sense of Facebook’s recent actions. He is convinced that Facebook’s actions have little to do with violation of terms and conditions. “They have an agenda and they are twisting their terms and conditions to pursue that agenda.”

Matt argued that Facebook is desperate to avoid possible antitrust attention: “They are in the hot seat over politics. They are worried about regulation. I think they are conducting security theater — in other words, they are pretending to do something.”

“Facebook can decide who gets elected,” Matt warned. “Their staff has joked that they can control the outcome of a presidential election just by where they deploy the ‘I voted’ badge, because that badge influences friends to vote.”

The fact that Facebook’s purge happened only weeks before the important 2018 midterm elections did not go unnoticed by Matt, either. “(T)hey wipe out hundreds of the top activists, real Americans who have been working in politics for years, just a month before midterms.” According to Matt, Facebook “wiped out” more than 60 million followers. The main Facebook pages of CNN and Fox News combined have only 46 million followers. “I don’t think staff at Facebook, who we don’t know and have zero transparency, should have that much power without regulation.”

One last note: Matt is a self-described liberal. His site is LiberalMountain.com. Matt’s content is vehemently anti-Trump and he depicted Republicans as Nazis. But Brown underlines a key point in a tweet directed personally to Matt about why The Western Journal, a conservative site, cares that Matt’s pages were deleted: “This isn’t a left-right issue, this is a free speech issue.”

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Shaun Hair

Executive Editor, The Western Journal

Shaun Hair is the Executive Editor of The Western Journal and the Vice President of Digital Content for Liftable Media. He manages the content and social media presence of one of the most viewed online news sites in the world.

@Exec_Edtr_WJ

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Randy DeSoto

Senior Staff Writer

Randy DeSoto is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book “We Hold These Truths” and screenwriter of the political documentary “I Want Your Money.”

@RandyDeSoto

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‘F*** the Bible Voters’: Democratic Fundraiser Crosses Every Line Imaginable

Reported By Lisa Payne-Naeger | October 9, 2018 at 10:40am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/democratic-crosses-every-line/

Democratic candidates Colin Allred, left, and Amy McGrath are running in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District and Texas’ 32nd District, respectively. (Colin Allred / Facebook; Amy McGrath / Facebook)

That’s it. I have come to the personal conclusion that liberals have completely lost their marbles.

This story reminds me of my mother trying to teach me as a young child that we are judged by the company we keep. I didn’t understand it then, but I certainly understand it now, especially as it applies in the world of politics.

However, that lesson is completely lost on the left.

The Washington Examiner published a piece by Ryan Girdusky on Monday that clearly illustrates that reality.

As he wrote, the Democrats have their sights set on overturning some Republican congressional districts in the November midterm elections by convincing voters their supposedly moderate candidates hold dear the center-right values of the voting demographic.

However, Democratic campaigns in Texas and Kentucky have teamed up with a motivational speaker “who has a history of hostile rhetoric and negative views of middle America,” Girdusky wrote.

That can’t possibly play well in those states.

“Retired Lt. Col. Amy McGrath and former Tennessee Titans linebacker Colin Allred are running in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District and Texas’ 32nd District, respectively,” he wrote. “Both candidates have been campaigning as centrists, and neither have endorsed extreme positions like, for example, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But despite their carefully crafted images, they have been working with far-left-wing activist and motivational speaker Laura Gassner Otting.”

And while her background seems harmless enough for a liberal, it hardly tells the entire story.

“According to her website, Otting is a professional motivational speaker who ‘helps innovators, idealists, and critics get “unstuck” in their thinking.’ Before becoming a motivational speaker, she was a political appointee for the Bill Clinton White House and then worked for several nonprofits,” Girdusky wrote.

Here’s where it gets sticky for Otting and Democrats.

Nothing ever dies completely on the internet. It never goes away. Girdusky found some old Facebook posts where Otting emotionally up-chucks all over conservatives and everything they stand for. How is she going to paint Democratic candidates as centrists when she holds core beliefs that are diametrically opposed to her target audiences?

The Examiner posted screen shots of some of her vile rants, explicit language and all. Her disdain for those who didn’t support Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is apparent in this post from August 2017.

“F— the patriarchy,” she began.

“F— the white males standing by in silence.

“F— the bible voters who looked away and believed the worst rumors about her instead of facing up to the worst facts about him.

“F— those who think they are being ‘replaced’ because they have to, for the first time in their privileged lives, compete with people who spend their days being twice, thrice, and four times as good to still just get table scraps.

“And f— those who didn’t vote, stayed out of the fray, considered themselves non-political, or couldn’t bring themselves to vote ‘for the lesser of two evils.’”

After Donald Trump won the election in November 2016, she went into a rant against “sexist” and “racist” America.

“So, America wants major change?” Otting wrote. “But, also overwhelmingly sent every ineffective male Republican incumbent back to the House and Senate? Don’t tell me this isn’t about misogyny.

“It turns out hate trumps love after all.

“Side note: who knew that America was even more sexist than racist? And jeez, it is racist.”

Girdusky connected the dots and noted that while Otting holds deeply disdainful feelings about conservatives and middle America, she held fundraisers for candidates Allred and McGrath at her home on June 25 and Sept. 25, respectively.

Girdusky said he attempted to reach out to the Allred and McGrath campaigns for an explanation, but representatives failed to return his calls.

Maybe the lesson here for Democrats is to be smarter about portraying themselves as something they aren’t. Americans are on to them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lisa Payne-Naeger

Contributor, Commentary

An enthusiastic grassroots Tea Party activist, Lisa Payne-Naeger has spent the better part of the last decade lobbying for educational and family issues in her state legislature, and as a keyboard warrior hoping to help along the revolution that empowers the people to retake control of their, out-of-control, government.

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Police: Democrat Ended Political Argument by Driving to Man’s Home, Opening Fire

Reported By Kara Pendleton | September 12, 2018 at

2:46pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/police-democrat-ended-political-argument-driving-mans-home-opening-fire/

Brian Sebring of Tampa, Florida, was arrested last month for allegedly shooting a man who he had a political disagreement with on social media. The victim suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Tampa Police DepartmentBrian Sebring of Tampa, Florida, was arrested last month for allegedly shooting a man after the two had a political argument on social media. The victim suffered non-life threatening injuries. (Tampa Police Department)

Perhaps when President Barack Obama, known for being divisive, left office, some held out hope for a more unified nation. Instead, there has been a ramping up of not only violent political rhetoric, but acts of violence, as well. Social media has been one place where that aggression has been seen surging. Take the example of a political disagreement on social media that resulted in a Florida man being shot.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, 44-year-old Brian Sebring — a registered Democrat — and Facebook friend Alex Stephens, 46, a convicted felon with no political registration, got into an online dispute last month involving politics. It ended with Sebring driving to Stephens’ home and shooting him.

“After receiving several explicit messages and threats, the defendant responded to the victim’s home to confront him (regarding) the messages,” according to a police report cited by the Tampa Bay Times. Sebring was arrested and told police that Stephens had threatened him, so he drove to his home in order to confront him.

However, Sebring took a Glock, in a waistband holster, and an AR-15 with him when he went to confront Stephens. After arriving at Stephen’s home, Sebring allegedly honked his truck horn and waited outside of the vehicle for Stephens. Stephens went outside and allegedly “charged at” Sebring. It was at this point that Sebring allegedly opened fire, hitting Stephens in the buttocks.

Despite Stephens fleeing and Sebring leaving the scene, police ultimately found and arrested Sebring for the shooting. He was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and carrying a concealed firearm. His bail was set at $9,500.

“I’m not a bad guy,” Sebring said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times a few days after the incident. “But I mean, this guy threatened to hurt my family, and I went off the deep end. I wasn’t thinking right. You know, after this I’m going to go see a therapist or something, man, because that’s some scary s—, that I could lose my temper like that and do something so stupid.”

The exact topic of the men’s dispute is not known, other than it had to do with politics. What we do know is that in the current political climate, violent rhetoric and violent acts are on the rise. And that makes it even more fool-hardy for anyone to make threats.

What we also know is that, overall, the violence is being perpetrated more heavily in one direction. And those violent threats and acts are leaning heavily against those on the right.

Breitbart has reported that instances of “violence against the right” are increasing as media outlets “amp up hate-rhetoric against Trump.” In July, Breitbart began documenting “acts of media-approved violence and harassment against Trump supporters.” The running total is now up to 564.

In mid-July, The Gateway Pundit noted that Breitbart’s running total at that time was just over 300. This means that in approximately two month’s time, the number has almost doubled. And more reports of violence continue to pour in.

It has long-since gone beyond an increase in violent threats on social media to actual attacks in real life.

Meanwhile, few on the left have said anything to discourage such behavior. Some, such as Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, have been blamed for amping up the hate and violence.

Some believe the incitement is intentional, with the ultimate goal being that of a civil war. Others point to mental disorders on a mass scale, with such tags as “liberalism” and “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

While such labels are sometimes used in jest, the injuries sustained by victims of the violence is no laughing matter. Something needs to be done and it needs to include Democratic leadership and media taking responsibility.

Violent rhetoric and violent acts against political opponents are not OK. This should be something both sides of the political aisle can agree upon and commit to fighting against. What actually happens, as reports continue to pour in and public outrage continues to grow, is yet to be seen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kara Pendleton

Contributor, Commentary

Specializing in news, politics and human interest stories, Kara Pendleton has been a professional writer and author since 2002. One of her proudest professional moments was landing an interview that even mainstream media couldn’t get.

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EXCLUSIVE: Facebook, Amazon, Google And Twitter All Work With Left-Wing SPLC

Reported by Peter Hasson | Reporter | 1:37 AM 06/07/2018

URL of the original posting site: http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/06/splc-partner-google-facebook-amazon/

The Southern Poverty Law Center helps Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter determine what organizations are “hate groups”
Amazon gave the SPLC the most direct authority while pretending to remain unbiased
The SPLC has been plagued by inaccuracies

Four of the world’s biggest tech platforms have working partnerships with a left-wing nonprofit that has a track record of inaccuracies and routinely labels conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter all work with or consult the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in policing their platforms for “hate speech” or “hate groups,” a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

The SPLC is on a list of “external experts and organizations” that Facebook works with “to inform our hate speech policies,” Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told TheDCNF in an interview.

Facebook consults the outside organizations when developing changes to hate speech policies, Budhraja said, noting that Facebook representatives will typically hold between one and three meetings with the groups.

Citing privacy concerns, the Facebook spokeswoman declined to name all the outside groups working with Facebook, but confirmed the SPLC’s participation.

Budhraja emphasized that Facebook’s definition of “hate group” is distinct from the SPLC’s definition and said that Facebook consults with groups across the political spectrum.

The SPLC accused Facebook in a May 8 article of not doing enough to censor “anti-Muslim hate” on the platform. That article did not disclose the SPLC’s working partnership with Facebook.

“We have our own process and our processes are different and I think that’s why we get the criticism [from the SPLC], because organizations that are hate organizations by their standards don’t match ours,” Budhraja said.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a process in place, and that definitely doesn’t mean we want the platform to be a place for hate but we aren’t going to map to the SPLC’s list or process,” she said.

Of the four companies, Amazon gives the SPLC the most direct authority over its platform, TheDCNF found.

While Facebook emphasizes its independence from the SPLC, Amazon does the opposite: Jeff Bezos’ company grants the SPLC broad policing power over the Amazon Smile charitable program, while claiming to remain unbiased.

“We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” an Amazon spokeswoman told TheDCNF.

Amazon grants the SPLC that power “because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever,” said the spokeswoman, who could not say whether Amazon considers the SPLC to be unbiased.

The Smile program allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their purchases on Amazon. Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon.

Only one participant in the program, the SPLC, gets to determine which other groups are allowed to join it.

Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom — which recently successfully represented a Christian baker at the Supreme Court — are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly anti-Semitic groups remain, TheDCNF found in May. (RELATED: Christian Baker Prevails At Supreme Court In Same-Sex Wedding Cake Dispute)

One month later, the anti-Semitic groups — but not the Alliance Defending Freedom — are still able to participate in the program.

Twitter lists the SPLC as a “safety partner” working with Twitter to combat “hateful conduct and harassment.”

The platform also includes the Trust and Safety Council, which “provides input on our safety products, policies, and programs,” according to Twitter. Free speech advocates have criticized it as Orwellian.

A Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment on the SPLC specifically, but said the company is “in regular contact with a wide range of civil society organizations and [nongovernmental organizations].”

Google uses the SPLC to help police hate speech on YouTube as part of YouTube’s “Trusted Flagger” program, The Daily Caller reported in February, citing a source with knowledge of the agreement. Following that report, the SPLC confirmed they’re policing hate speech on YouTube.

The SPLC and other third-party groups in the “Trusted Flagger” program work closely with YouTube’s employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways, according to YouTube. free speech def

First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers who design the algorithms policing the video platform, but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.

The SPLC is one of over 300 government agencies and nongovernmental organizations in the YouTube program, the vast majority of which remain hidden behind confidentiality agreements.

The SPLC has consistently courted controversy in publishing lists of “extremists” and “hate groups.” The nonprofit has been plagued by inaccuracies this year, retracting four articles in March and April alone.

The well-funded nonprofit, which did not return a request for comment, deleted three Russia-related articles in March after challenges to their accuracy followed by legal threats. All three articles focused on drawing conspiratorial connections between anti-establishment American political figures and Russian influence operations in the United States.

The SPLC removed a controversial “anti-Muslim extremist” list in April, after British Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz threatened to sue over his inclusion on the list. The SPLC had accused the supposed-extremists of inciting anti-Muslim hate crimes. (RELATED: SPLC Pulls Controversial ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist’ List After Legal Threats)

Somali-born women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali also made the list.

Ali, a victim of female genital mutilation who now advocates against the practice, is an award-winning human rights activist. But according to the SPLC’s since-deleted list, she was an “anti-Muslim extremist.”

Ali criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook in August 2017 for donating to the SPLC, which she described as “an organization that has lost its way, smearing people who are fighting for liberty and turning a blind eye to an ideology and political movement that has much in common with Nazism.”

Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who is now the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was surprised to find out in February 2015 that the SPLC had placed him on an “extremist watch list” for his conservative beliefs.

“When embracing traditional Christian values is equated to hatred, we are approaching the stage where wrong is called right and right is called wrong. It is important for us to once again advocate true tolerance,” Carson said in response.

“That means being respectful of those with whom we disagree and allowing people to live according to their values without harassment,” he continued. “It is nothing but projectionism when some groups label those who disagree with them as haters.”

Following a backlash, the SPLC apologized and removed him from their list. Carson was on the list for four months before the SPLC removed the “extremist” label.

Floyd Lee Corkins, who attempted a mass shooting at the conservative Family Research Center in 2012, said he chose the organization for his act of violence because the SPLC listed them as a “hate group.”

The SPLC has faced tough criticisms not just from conservatives, but from establishment publications, as well.

“At a time when the line between ‘hate group’ and mainstream politics is getting thinner and the need for productive civil discourse is growing more serious, fanning liberal fears, while a great opportunity for the SPLC, might be a problem for the nation,” Ben Schreckinger, now with GQ, wrote in a June 2017 piece for Politico.

Washington Post Reporter Megan McArdle, while still reporting for Bloomberg, similarly criticized the SPLC’s flimsy definition of “hate group” in September 2017. Media outlets who trust the SPLC’s labels, McArdle warned, “will discredit themselves with conservative readers and donors.”

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson