Federal ‘Censorship Nerve Center’ Likely to Shutter, but State Would ‘Realign’ Staff for Same Work

Global Engagement Center website

The State Department is planning to change how it engages with the globe as it braces for unified Republican government that promises to gut the so-called censorship-industrial complex, the subject of a four-part Just the News series this fall.

But like the evolution of the broader global public-private partnership to label, throttle, remove and defund purported misinformation, disinformation and “true but inconvenient” malinformation (MDM) on tech platforms, State’s change may only be in name.

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House Judiciary Chair Jordan Says FBI, Others Are Weaponized to Spy on Americans’ Bank Accounts

ATM on the street

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Tuesday that the federal government has been weaponized to spy on Americans’ bank accounts and financial transactions.

“We know in 2023 [that] 14,000 different individuals in the government [about] three million times in one year……14,000 individuals did over three million searches of this database of information on Americans banking habits,” Jordan said on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show.

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Microsoft Promotes Media Literacy as ‘Inoculation’ Against ‘Disinformation’

Robots reading newspapers

Microsoft has staked a claim in the growing field of “media literacy” and “digital literacy,” which aims to instruct members of the public – especially schoolchildren – in what types of digital media they ought to trust and distrust. As FFO has previously reported, media and digital literacy is the latest in a long string of pretexts by the ideologically biased censorship industry to prevent the public from accessing disfavored information sources.

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Commentary: DOGE’s Greatest Christmas Gift Is the Disassembly of the Government Mindset

Donald Trump DOGE Christmas

All I want for Christmas is a DOGE!

While this isn’t a typical holiday request – more likely people would prefer a furry, friendly kind of animal who greets them at the door to a static, cold, unfeeling stack of program cancellation papers – this year, in 2024, The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is all the rage simply because the new non-government advisory board will bring something new and novel to the Washington swamp, an entity focused on cleaning up the gargantuan fiscal mess in the nation’s capital rather than bent on creating new complications.

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Disgraced Former Clinton Ally Anthony Weiner May Be Launching His Political Comeback

Anthony Weiner

Disgraced former Democratic New York Rep. Anthony Weiner may be gearing up for an attempted political comeback, according to New York City campaign records.

Weiner, formerly married to top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, saw his political career and marriage implode in the wake of lurid sexting scandals, including one in which he sent explicit photographs to an underage woman that resulted in a jail sentence. Now, the registered sex offender appears to be laying the groundwork for a career resurgence, as the New York City Campaign Finance Board (NYCCFB) indicates that Weiner will run to represent New York City’s second district on the city council next year.

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House Dems Push to Oust Aging Committee Leaders Following Election Defeat

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

The Democratic Party is shaking up its committee leadership in the House of Representatives following its crushing November election defeat.

Despite failing to take back a majority, Democrats have retained their top leadership in the House of Representatives, tapping House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar to stay on in their current roles. Meanwhile, the knives have come out at the committee level, with a slew of Democratic representatives launching bids against more senior panel members for top committee posts.

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Commentary: GOP Senate Needs to Show Up to Work and Block Biden Labor Board Chair Pick

Lauren McFerren, President Joe Biden

President Joe Biden is engaged in an end of presidency power play to keep Democrat control over the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by pushing a renewal of current chair Lauren McFerran to another term. Senate Republicans should do everything in their power to stop this power play and allow newly elected President Donald Trump to name the next Chairperson. This means that they have to all show up to each lame duck Senate session to stop any funny business.

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Shock Admission: ActBlue Tells Congress It Didn’t Block Foreign Gift Card Donations to Democrats until Fall

Act Blue donation platform

ActBlue, the massive online fund-raising platform for liberal causes, has informed Congress it did not automatically block donations made with foreign-bought gift cards until recently, a potentially significant revelation in an ongoing investigation into whether China, Russia, Iran or Venezuela routed illicit money to Democrat candidates.

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‘EPIC!’: Matt Gaetz Lands New Primetime Gig on Conservative Network

Matt Gaetz on OANN

Former Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz is set to join the primetime lineup One America News Network (OAN) in January, the network announced Tuesday.

Gaetz will host his hour-long program, “The Matt Gaetz Show,” at 9 p.m. EST every weeknight, according to OAN’s press release. The network hired the former congressman after he had resigned from his seat and withdrew his nomination to become U.S. attorney general under President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming administration.

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Rasmussen: Ending Birthright Citizenship ‘Popular with Voters’

Illegal immigrant children, women processing

The results of a poll from early 2024 is receiving renewed attention after former President Trump considers ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

“We’re going to have to get it changed. We’ll maybe have to go back to the people,” Trump said in a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But we have to end it.”

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Bombshell Memo from 2021 Warned Unprepared DHS About Surge of Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Migrant caravan

Long before Congress became alarmed over as many as 320,000 unaccompanied minor children from the border crisis, the Department of Homeland Security prepared a briefing memo in summer 2021 starkly warning Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that federal authorities were ill-equipped to deal with a surge of young immigrants or reunite them with their parents, according to a copy of the memo reviewed by Just the News.

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Commentary: Nearly Four Years Later, No Letup in Jan. 6 Prosecutions, Possible Pardons or Not

Biden and Garland

by Julie Kelley   Even as President-elect Donald Trump promised on Sunday to act “very quickly” on pardons for many of the protesters involved in the events of January 6, the Biden administration’s Justice Department is continuing to arrest and try people for actions that occurred almost four years ago while opposing motions to delay trials because of the need for “the prompt and efficient administration of justice.” If the defeat of Kamala Harris constituted at least a partial repudiation of the lawfare against Trump and his supporters, the message appears to be lost on top brass at the DOJ. Prosecutors are pushing ahead with what they consider the department’s crowning achievement: the so-called “Capitol Siege” investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021. In what Attorney General Merrick Garland describes as the biggest criminal investigation in Department of Justice history, more than 1,560 people have been charged for federal crimes never before used against political protesters, including under a post-Enron obstruction statute overturned by the Supreme Court in June. At least 1,000 of these defendants have been convicted – either at trial or by accepting plea offers –  with some 650 defendants ordered to serve time in a federal prison. Sentences range…

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New Defense Spending Bill Puts Slew of Left-Wing Initiatives on Chopping Block

Mike Rogers

Congress’ latest defense spending bill unveiled Saturday would deal a major blow to a slew of left-wing policy initiatives that have been pushed by the Biden Pentagon.

The National Defense Reauthorization Act of 2025 (NDAA) includes provisions that prohibit the use of Department of Defense (DoD) funds to promote Critical Race Theory, climate change, the procurement of sex change surgeries for children and further extends a freeze on hiring for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, according to the text of the bill. The bill is likely to pass a Republican-controlled House and Senate amid promises from President-elect Donald Trump to rein in the so-called “woke” military.

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New Missouri State Legislator Introduces Bill to Award $1,000 Bounty to Americans Who Report Illegal Aliens

David Gregory

A newly-elected state lawmaker in Missouri has introduced a bill that will award a bounty of $1,000 to any citizen who reports an illegal alien to the authorities.

As reported by Fox News, the bill introduced by State Senator-elect David Gregory (R-Mo.), SB 72, would see citizens receive their reward only after an illegal has been arrested. Such tips would be processed through “an information system for people to report violations of this act which shall include a toll-free telephone hotline, e-mail, and online reporting portal.” The system would be implemented and managed by the state’s Department of Public Safety.

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Trump Signals Shift from Unnecessary Military Intervention with Reaction to Assad Ouster in Syria

Trump and Syria

The unexpected fall of the Assad regime in Syria to a ragtag team of Islamist insurgents plunged the Middle East into a new era of uncertainty and opportunity while putting the world on notice that Donald Trump’s return to power was already uprooting decades of interventionist foreign policy in America.

Trump signaled the shift in dramatic fashion, yawning at the Islamist rebels’ final push into Damascus to oust Bashar al-Assad as not a battle America needed to fight and then using its aftermath to urge Russia, long a backer of Assad, to focus instead on seeking a peaceful end to its war against Ukraine.

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DOD Sends an Additional $988 Million Package to Ukraine

Biden and Ukraine

The U.S. Department of Defense announced a new round of nearly $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer money for Ukraine as the conflict with Russia continues. Total U.S. taxpayer funding for Ukraine now totals $62 billion since the war began.

The latest package will provide Ukraine with munitions for rocket systems, Unmanned Aerial Systems, and maintenance and repair programs to sustain and bolster its combat power.

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Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Challenge to Racial Discrimination in Public School Admissions

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a case challenging Boston Public Schools using a student’s ZIP code as a factor for admission in an attempt to admit more nonwhite students.

The case alleges white students were unfairly discriminated against after several prestigious schools within the district created a quota for admitting students from different ZIP codes rather than basing admission on the students’ academic performance, leading to decreased white enrollment. Several schools have created alternative admissions policies in an attempt to sidestep the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that banned the use of race as a factor for admission into schools.

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California’s Major University Accreditor Wants to Elimanate DEI Requirements

Cal Berkeley

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is considering removing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) language from its accreditation standards.

The accreditor is responsible for overseeing the entire University of California (UC) system, the California State University system and several religious institutions. The proposed update to the standards would remove language requiring universities to commit to DEI in order to receive accreditation.

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President-Elect Trump Vows to Work with Congress to Pass Reciprocal Trade Act

Donald Trump

President-elect Donald Trump vowed to work with Congress to pass a bill implementing reciprocal trade protections with other nations as part of his economic plan.

The bill called the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act would empower the president to impose reciprocal tariffs on goods from foreign countries if those countries’ tariffs on American-made goods are higher than the tariff imposed by the U.S.

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U.S. Economy Added 227K Jobs in November, Annual Jobless Rate Increased Slightly to 4.2 Percent: Feds

Job Interview

The Labor Department reported Friday the number of new jobs in the U.S. economy increased in November, compared to the previous month, while the unemployment rate increased slightly to the annualize rate of 4.2%

The economy in November added 227,000 new, non-farm jobs, compared to 36,000 in October, according to the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The November number exceeded Wall Street expectations of 214,000 new jobs. 

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Music Spotlight: Wendy Moten

Wendy Moten

Not long after I started writing my Music Spotlight column, I came across one of the greatest voices I’d ever heard in Nashville, Wendy Moten. I even gave her a shoutout when Heidi Newfield released her Barfly Sessions record in 2020.

After Moten rose to fame as the runner-up on NBC’s The Voice in 2021, the rest of the world saw how fabulous she was, and I knew getting an interview would be more of a challenge.

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Commentary: Misremembering Pearl Harbor

Most Americans once were mostly in agreement about what happened on December 7, 1941, 80 years ago this year. But not so much now, given either the neglect of America’s past in the schools or woke revisionism at odds with the truth. 

The Pacific war that followed Pearl Harbor was not a result of America egging on the Japanese, not about starting a race war, and not about much other than a confident and cruel Japanese empire falsely assuming that its stronger American rival either would not or could not stop its transoceanic ambitions. 

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Arizona Couple Began ‘Transitioning’ Their Child as 1-Year-Old Boy

Michelle Callahan-DuMont

After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in U.S. v Skrmetti, the case that will determine whether states may ban transgender medical procedures for kids, one mother told The Daily Signal that her child began to transition as a baby.

“She knew since birth,” Michelle Callahan-DuMont said of her 10-year-old, a biological male who says he identifies as a transgender female and goes by the name “Violet.”

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Jim Clyburn Reveals He Told Biden’s Staff to Push President to Pardon Trump

Trump and Biden

Democratic South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn disclosed on Thursday that he has urged President Joe Biden’s staff to get him to issue a “preemptive” pardon for President-elect Donald Trump.

Clyburn, who helped save Biden in the 2020 primary with an endorsement, is one of several prominent Democrats to suggest that the president should pardon Trump following his pardon of his son Hunter on Sunday. The South Carolina representative, on NewsNation’s “The Hill,” said that while he has not yet spoken to Biden himself about the matter, he told the president’s staff that he should weigh issuing multiple “preemptive pardons,” including for Trump.

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National Police Association ‘Strongly Endorses’ Kash Patel for FBI Director

Kash Patel

The National Police Association on Friday “strongly” endorsed Kash Patel, President-elect Trump’s nominee for FBI director, and urged the Senate to confirm him.

“We firmly believe that Kash Patel’s appointment as FBI Director will mark a pivotal moment for law enforcement and public safety across the United States. His leadership will bring a renewed focus on collaboration, ethical standards, and the relentless pursuit of justice,” the organization said in a statement.

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Judges Rule Against TikTok Citing ‘Grave Threat to National Security’

iPhone with TikTok app logo

A federal appeals court ruled Friday to uphold a law that will force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the platform or have it banned in the U.S.

A panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled unanimously that the law forcing ByteDance, TikTok’s parent firm, to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or face a U.S. ban is legal, clearing the way for the law to take effect on Jan. 19, 2025. In their ruling, the judges characterized TikTok as a national security risk because the Chinese government is able to manipulate the app to its advantage and stated that the April divest-or-ban law does not run afoul of the First Amendment, as some of the law’s critics have contended.

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Trump Continues to Back Hegseth as Defense Secretary Nominee: ‘He Will Be a fantastic, High Energy’

Pete Hegseth

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday expresses his continued support of Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth in trying to win Senate confirmation, amid allegations of sexual assault, alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement. 

“Pete Hegseth is doing very well,” Trump posted on social media, as his nominee, also a military veteran, meets with Republican senators on Capitol Hill to try to convince them he’s fit and qualified to lead the U.S. military. 

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Trump Reveals His Picks to Lead Two Major Immigration Enforcement Agencies

Caleb Vitello, Rodney Scott

President-elect Donald Trump announced his nominations to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), two agencies that will be at the forefront of his ambitious immigration agenda.

In a string of social media posts Thursday night, the president-elect announced the nominations of Caleb Vitello to lead ICE and Rodney Scott to lead CBP. Both men have worked for years in their respective agencies, with Vitello currently serving as the assistant director for the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs with the agency, and Scott formerly serving as the Border Patrol chief in both the first Trump administration and Biden administration.

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Commentary: Confidence That Trump’s Economy Is Returning Fueled the Latest Strong Jobs Report

Food Workers

Job creation in November bounced back, with 227,000 jobs created, after coming to a standstill in October.

This solid jobs report is due to one factor: President Trump’s reelection. The Republican victory has renewed confidence among Main Street job creators. The tough economic times of the Biden-Harris administration are ending, and the strong Trump economy is returning.

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Analysis: Global Censorship Hub ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ Reached Agreement with State Department to Conceal Government Grants from the Public

National Endowment for Democracy

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has – since at least 2021 – failed to comply with transparency requirements regarding the more than $300 million of taxpayer funding it receives from the U.S. Department of State, potentially violating federal regulations under 22 CFR 67.4 and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA).

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China’s Digital Strategy: Cyber-Espionage and Biometric Surveillance in Global Technological Expansion

Agriculture Robot

by J.V. Caro   China’s infiltration into agricultural IoT (Internet of Things) networks represents a critical yet underexplored dimension of its global technological strategy. Through key players such as Huawei and Alibaba Cloud, Beijing has embedded IoT technologies into agricultural systems in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These initiatives, often framed as development partnerships aimed at improving food production and supply chain resilience, concurrently enable the collection of extensive agricultural and environmental data with profound strategic and geopolitical implications. Agricultural IoT systems are revolutionizing farming practices by collecting real-time, high-resolution data on variables such as soil moisture, nutrient levels, weather conditions, pest infestations, irrigation patterns, crop growth rates, and logistical movements. Chinese companies like Huawei and Alibaba are at the forefront of this technological advancement, designing platforms that support precision agriculture through the integration of advanced sensors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to optimize farm management. In Kenya, Huawei has actively collaborated with local partners and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization to implement smart farming solutions aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability. By deploying IoT sensors that monitor critical agricultural parameters and transmitting this data to cloud platforms where AI algorithms provide actionable insights, farmers have reportedly…

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U.S. Senate Releases Legislative Calendar, Will Spend More Days in Session Than the House in 2025

Congress Building

The Senate is scheduled to spend more time on Capitol Hill than the House of Representatives next year, according to the new legislative calendar it released on Thursday.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise released the lower chamber’s legislative calendar for next year on Wednesday, which schedules lawmakers to be in the nation’s capital for 34 weeks. The regular work-week will last four days, primarily from Monday through Thursday. 

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