Minnesota Secretary of State: Election Officials Within Their Rights to Work with Big Tech to Fight ‘Outright Disinformation’

Fresh off a legislative session where Steve Simon was able to check off nearly every item on his election reform “wish list,” the recently re-elected Minnesota secretary of state took some time to speak to both national and local media about how he views the landscape of the upcoming 2024 election, and as he calls it the “democracy business.”

According to Simon, those who intend to suppress the vote with election-related “disinformation” or intimidation may be tripped up by new election-reform laws recently passed by the Democrat trifecta in the Minnesota Legislature. But he told the Washington Post in an interview this week that he doesn’t believe those new voter protections in Minnesota will necessarily deter disinformation efforts come 2024.

Read the full story

Biden Admin Asks for Emergency Order Stopping Ban on Big Tech Censorship Coordination

The Biden administration requested an emergency order Thursday night to pause the preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge to prevent officials from communicating with social media platforms to censor protected speech.

The administration asked to immediately halt the injunction, issued by Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty on Tuesday, or to issue a seven day administrative stay while their appeal to the Fifth Circuit, which was filed on Wednesday, is pending. Doughty’s injunction bars federal officials in the Department of Health and Human Services, FBI and other agencies from communicating with social media platforms for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Read the full story

Judge Orders Biden Administration to Limit Contact with Social Media Platforms

A Louisiana federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Biden administration to limit its contact with social media platforms, determining that the government likely violated the First Amendment by working to censor disfavored political viewpoints online. Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointed U.S. District Court judge, issued a preliminary injunction barring federal officials and agencies from contacting social media firms to seek the removal of protected speech, Politico reported.

Read the full story

Ramaswamy Returns to Iowa, Pushes Importance of Citizenship, American Revival

While Liberal-led LinkedIn may want to silence Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Iowans have welcomed the Ohio businessman with open arms. 

Ramaswamy preached American revival with Iowa voters Saturday morning at the rustic, farmer-themed Machine Shed restaurant in suburban Des Moines, part of a multi-city trip to the Hawkeye State this Memorial Day Weekend.

Read the full story

Hundreds of Former Federal Surveillance Officials Have Moved to Jobs in Big Tech

Over 200 former employees of federal surveillance agencies have since joined the corporate ranks of Big Tech companies in recent years, thus increasing the likelihood of systematic censorship of conservative accounts by such platforms.

According to the Daily Caller, the four social media companies Google, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok have recruited 248 former employees from the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice (DOJ), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as proven by searches of the professional job listing and networking platform LinkedIn. The bulk of these hires were made between 2017 and 2022, with some of the former federal employees moving on to top executive positions within the social media companies.

Read the full story

Analysis: The RESTRICT Act Could Be Used to Shut Down Any App That Challenges the ‘Reported Result’ of an Election

The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act (RESTRICT Act), S.686, contains language that could be used to shut down any website or app with more than 1 million users that challenges the “reported result of a Federal election” — threatening websites and apps that allow free speech on their platforms including Truth Social and Rumble, not just TikTok, the supposed reason for the legislation.

Read the full story

Arizona Considers Bill to Fine Social Media Firms $250,00 Per Day for Banning Candidates

Social media platforms that choose to suspend or ban candidates for office would face tens of thousands – or hundreds of thousands – of dollars a day in fines under legislation working its way through the Legislature.

The House Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved Senate Bill 1106 along party lines. The bill defines how a social media suspends, bans or reduces the exposure of an account. This is also referred to as “shadowbanning.”

Read the full story

Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly’s Support for Censoring Viewpoints on Social Media Is Taken Out of Context: Spox

Sen Mark Kelly

During a Zoom call this past week with federal government finance officials, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) called for censorship of unfavorable remarks on social media. He was referring to posts raising alarm about the financial stableness of banks after the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which resulted in long lines of customers attempting to take their money out and the Biden administration stepping in to guarantee deposits of over $250,000, amounts the law doesn’t insure. 

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, expressed his concern in an op-ed for The New York Post titled “Censorship addicts: Democrats seek to squelch speech on banks.” He said, “Rather than convince citizens that their deposits are safe, it is easier to just silence anyone who disagrees with you. So now ‘the expense’ of free speech is too high if it might undermine faith in our banks’ stability.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Government Censorship Agency Scrubs Disinformation Web Page About Its History Interacting with Social Media Platforms

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the censorship agency everyone has been talking about, has scrubbed its Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation (MDM) webpage, https://cisa.gov/mdm to remove any mentions of interacting with “appropriate social media platforms” to “route disinformation concerns”.

How malinformative, to use the agency’s jargon. Malinformation, per the agency, “is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” By removing mentions and the context of the agency’s stated history of interacting with social media platforms, the agency is apparently attempting to mislead, harm and manipulate the public into believing it never did those things in the first place.

Read the full story

Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to Host Town Hall Meetings Across Tennessee Focusing on Big Tech’s Impact on Children

To learn more about the problems residents have encountered regarding the negative effects of social media on kids, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office announced that it will host three town hall meetings across the state this month.

The town hall meetings come as Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is leading a 50-state coalition in putting together a case investigating certain Big Tech companies. Skremtti told The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy that these town hall meetings will focus on “the effects of social media on kids and the mental health impact of social media on teenagers.”

Read the full story

Big Tech Faces Potential Reckoning at Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a landmark case that could see every major social media platform become liable for harmful content on their websites, changing the game forever when it comes to legal protections for such companies.

As reported by Politico, the case Gonzalez v. Google is centered around the family of a woman who was killed in the Paris terrorist attacks in November of 2015. Her family claims that the video-sharing platform YouTube, which is owned by Google, should be held liable for allowing pro-ISIS propaganda videos to be hosted on the site, which the family claims helped radicalize one of the attackers.

Read the full story

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: ‘What Protections do Americans Have That Data Tracking the Unvaccinated Won’t Be Used Illegitimately?’

SOMERS, Connecticut – Stanford University School of Medicine Professor Jay Bhattacharya, M.D. said in an interview with The Star News Network Friday that Americans “should be asking” whether diagnostic code data now being utilized to identify patients who were either never vaccinated or not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be used “illegitimately.”

Bhattacharya responded to a question about the recent implementation in the United States of new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) diagnostic codes that requires doctors at clinics and hospitals to ask patients about their COVID mRNA vaccination status.

Read the full story

Congress Takes First Shot at Federal Censorship: A Moratorium on DOJ Payments to Social Media

Stunned by a growing body of evidence showing federal pressure to silence Americans’ voices online, House Republicans have unleashed their first legislation to slow government requests to Big Tech to censor content.

The ELON Act, introduced this month by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and backed by nine other cosponsors, would impose a one-year moratorium on taxpayer payments from the Justice Department to social media firms as well as require an audit on how much money changed hands since the start of 2015 between DOJ and Big Tech firms.

Read the full story

Article III Project Founder Believes Jim Jordan Has No Intention of Holding Big Tech Accountable

Article III Project founder and President Mike Davis says he doubts House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan will hold Big Tech accountable for its abuse of power for colluding with the federal government.

“Jim Jordan has no intention of actually holding big tech accountable,” Davis said on the Wednesday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “He pretends like he is fighting against Big Tech, but behind the scenes he’s making these key decisions like opposing bipartisan reforms last Congress and appointing someone who is pro Big Tech.”

Read the full story

Big Tech-Aligned Group Wants to Go ‘Nationwide’ in Shaping Election Operations

A Big Tech-aligned group funded through liberal dark money is moving to expand “nationwide,” even though about half the states have banned using private money to run elections. 

The Center for Tech and Civic Life launched the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence in partnership with organizations funded by the liberal Arabella Advisors and Democracy Fund, as The Daily Signal previously reported. The tech center is the same group that distributed $350 million in election-administration grants in 2020 from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife.

Read the full story

Alliance of Big Tech, Dark Money Groups Partners with Counties in State That Bans ‘Zuckerbucks’ for Elections

The group that distributed most of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial election grants in 2020 has designated at least two Utah counties as part of a new effort, despite a state ban on private money funding election operations. 

The two local juridictions are Cache County, with a population of 137,00, and Weber County, population 267,000.

Read the full story

Flow of U.S. Intelligence Analysts into Big Tech Jobs Raises Alarm

As Congress and the courts delve deeper into federally sanctioned censorship by Big Tech, a troubling revolving door has emerged between the U.S. intelligence community and the Big Tech giants on the front lines of one of the fiercest battles over free speech in modern American history.

A Just the News review of LinkedIn employment histories of senior Big Tech executives found that at least 200 former workers of the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Security Council and Homeland Security Department have landed Silicon Valley jobs, many within content moderation units regulating supposed “disinformation” and disproportionately throttling news and opinion deviating from approved, left-tilting norms. 

Read the full story

New Bill Would Ban Feds from Working with Big Tech to Censor Americans

Leading Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives filed new legislation that would ban federal employees from working with big tech companies to censor Americans.

The bill comes as ongoing reports show that federal law enforcement and the White House have regularly communicated with social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, pressuring the companies to remove posts and accounts for a range of issues, including questioning the COVID-19 vaccine.

Read the full story

House Republicans Call for Ban on Big Tech Private Funding of Election Administration

Some House Republicans are urging federal action to bar private money from bankrolling election administration after a Big Tech-aligned group that made controversial grants in 2020 is issuing another round of grants aimed at the 2024 elections. 

“Private money has no place in public election infrastructure,” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., told The Daily Signal in a statement. 

Read the full story

Harvard Med Research on mRNA Vax Spike Protein Undermines Fact-Checkers, COVID Censorship

Fact-checkers and Big Tech lost another round with purported COVID-19 misinformation this week, when an American Heart Association journal published research suggesting the spike protein used in mRNA vaccines can harm some people.

The peer-reviewed study in Circulation reviewed 16 adolescents and young adults hospitalized at Massachusetts General Hospital or Boston Children’s with post-vaccination myocarditis from January 2021-February 2022. All had “markedly elevated levels of full-length spike protein” in their blood, “unbounded by antibodies.”

Read the full story

Feds Use Facebook to Study COVID Vaccine, Testing, and Mask Messaging

healthcare worker giving vaccination

Legislation that would use federal agencies to “nudge” social media platforms to reduce the spread of “harmful content” isn’t going anywhere in the waning days of the 117th Congress. 

As evidenced by the ongoing release of the “Twitter Files,” however, that’s no impediment to the government — and the research universities that so heavily depend on federal funding — enlisting Big Tech to promote favored narratives and throttle competing arguments on contentious topics.

Federal agencies and U.S. universities together have funded or sponsored a dozen studies mentioning Facebook and COVID-19, according to the National Institutes of Health’s ClinicalTrials.gov database.

Read the full story

10 Major Revelations Exposing Extent of Government Pressure on Big Tech to Censor Americans

Two hundred and thirty-one years ago this month, America’s founders enshrined free speech as the first protection in the ratified Bill of Rights with a declaration that the government could not infringe expression. A series of blockbuster revelations at the end of 2022 show just how imperiled those protections have become in the era of Big Tech.

From Elon Musk’s “Twitter files” to an FBI agent’s candid testimony, Americans have gotten a glimpse into a once-hidden enterprise where federal agencies pressured social media platforms – directly and through proxies – to censor content under their terms of service. The goal, it appears, was to preserve the ruling elite’s favored narratives on everything from the pandemic to election integrity.

Read the full story

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Is There Anything the FBI Won’t Do?

The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant – ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. 

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.” 

Read the full story

GOP to Pursue FBI ‘Secret Files’ Regarding Contact with Big Tech

On Sunday, Congressman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said that the new GOP majority in the House of Representatives will investigate recently-revealed examples of collusion between Big Tech and the FBI by pursuing any “secret files” the FBI may have kept on the matter.

The New York Post reports that Turner, the incoming Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that “it is my understanding from our contacts that we have had with the FBI that there are secret files that the FBI has of these contacts that they were having with social media and with mainstream media.”

Read the full story

More Evidence Reveals CDC Colluded with Social Media Giants to Silence COVID ‘Misinformation’

America First Legal (AFL) released a fourth set of documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that reveals more evidence of alleged collusion between the nation’s public health agency and social media companies to censor free speech and silence Americans under the government’s label of “misinformation.”

Last week, AFL’s 600-page document release uncovered evidence that Twitter operated a “Partner Support Portal” for government employees and other selective “stakeholders” that would allow them to delete or flag posts viewed as “misinformation,” noted AFL, which is led by former President Donald Trump’s immigration advisor Stephen Miller.

Read the full story

FBI Met with Twitter ‘Weekly’ Ahead of 2020, Warned of ‘Hack-and-Leak’ Operations

In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, FBI agents would hold “weekly” meetings with Big Tech company Twitter to discuss content moderation, eventually leading to the agency warning the platform of so-called “hack-and-leak operations” by foreign “state actors” shortly before the company censored the Hunter Biden laptop story on these grounds.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Administrative State Can Put a Bug in Your Phone

n the age of cellphones and the internet, consumers often face a simple choice: convenience or privacy? Do we let Big Tech have access to our private communications and free email accounts because it’s so easy?

Once you’ve said yes — and who among us has not? — it’s not a stretch to think that Big Data already has almost all your information, so why get picky at the next juncture?

Read the full story

Judge Denies Jen Psaki’s Attempt to Avoid Testifying About White House-Big Tech Collusion

A federal court denied former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s request Monday to avoid deposition in a lawsuit alleging coordination between Biden administration authorities and social media companies to suppress free speech.

The lawsuit first filed by Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry in May accuses President Joe Biden and administration parties, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of colluding with or coercing the companies to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content” on their platforms with “dis-information,” “mis-information” and “mal-information” labels. Psaki filed a motion last week in a bid to avoid complying with the subpoena requiring her to testify, but Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District Court of Louisiana decided Monday to reject the motion and Psaki’s alternative request to stay her deposition.

Read the full story

Twitter Removes Warning Flag on ‘Just the News’ Ballot-Harvesting Story After Direct Appeal to Musk

Elon Musk

Twitter has removed its warning label on a post from the account of Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon about his story on a whistleblower alleging ballot harvesting in Florida, following Solomon’s direct appeal to the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk.

Solomon made the post Thursday that included a link to his interview with the whistleblower. The label was put on the post Friday, and as of Monday morning, it was no longer there.

Read the full story

Elon Musk Vows to Review Why Just the News Story Was Censored

Twitter owner Elon Musk on Sunday said he would “look into” why a story from Just the News about election ballots was marked as “unsafe” on the social media platform.

“I will look into this. Twitter should be even-handed, favoring neither side,” Musk tweeted early Sunday morning in response to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who posted the Just the News article, “Election ‘misinformation’ policing returns as Twitter flags JTN ballot harvesting report.”

Read the full story

On Musk’s First Day, Twitter Flags Just the News On-the-Record Story on Election Ballots as ‘Unsafe’

On the day Elon Musk took over Twitter, the social media platform flagged a post by Just the News Editor-in-Chief John Solomon aboutt Florida Gov. GOP Ron DeSantis’ administration asking for a police probe into a Democrat politician’s whistleblower complaint about voting irregularities.

Solomon argues Twitter action Thursday night unfairly flagged the post – with the note “Warning: this link may be unsafe” – and is asking Musk, who has vowed to stop the platform from unjustly censuring content, to intervene.

Read the full story

Big Tech in Trouble After Brutal Earnings Reports

Big Tech stocks dropped this week as firms across the industry posted a series of weak earnings reports, with social media giant Meta set to post a significant slowdown after markets close Wednesday.

This year, Meta, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple have lost $2.5 trillion in market value combined, Reuters reported Wednesday. Meta is expected to post a 5% decline in revenue compared to last year due to reduced ad traffic as users struggle with inflation and spend more time with rival TikTok, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Tentacles of the Social Media Octopus

Washington DC

by Victor Davis Hanson   A shared theme in all dystopian explorations of future and current totalitarian regimes – whether China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba – is government control of all media information, fueled by electronic surveillance. A skeptical public learns to say one thing publicly but quite another privately. It nervously nods yes at the news while at work, but at home cynically assumes the opposite of whatever is publicly said to be true. RIP, First Amendment Such electronic propaganda has sadly become characteristic of the world’s oldest consensual government. In America we once believed our First Amendment prevented a government monopoly on information. But in the age of globalization, the Internet, and social media, the state has become the enemy – not the protector – of free speech. One obvious sign is that the Biden Administration keeps trying to create new sorts of ministries of truth or “Disinformation Governance Boards.” It alleges such Orwellian censors must combat “disinformation” and “misinformation.” In fact, these bureaucracies are designed to criminalize unwanted free expression while also advancing state propaganda. Among our Washington officials, the following myths were once declared the official version of the “truth”: Mounted border patrol agents “whipped”…

Read the full story

Commentary: The Monopoly Hiding in Plain Sight

With persistent inflation and growing concerns over a recession, pundits, policymakers, and the president have expressed concern about an alleged lack of competition lurking in the dark corners of the U.S. economy. As President Biden himself said, “capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism, it’s exploitation.” From Big Tech to baby food, both sides of the aisle are on the lookout for monopoly power. But sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.

Read the full story

Twitter Blocks, Then Restores, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s Post Noting Rise in Cardiac-Related Deaths Among Young Men After COVID Shots

Social media giant Twitter first blocked, then restored, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s tweet regarding the state health department’s guidance in which is noted a study showing an “84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination COVID-19 mRNA shots.”

“Today, we released an analysis on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of,” Ladapo tweeted. “This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39. FL will not be silent on the truth.”

Read the full story

Radicalized Medical Associations Ask DOJ and Big Tech to Censor and Prosecute Journalists Opposing Gender Surgeries for Minors

National medical associations that have been infiltrated by radical leftists wrote to Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland this week requesting the Department of Justice (DOJ) “do more” to block the views of those who spread “disinformation” regarding transgender surgeries for minors and to “take swift action to investigate and prosecute all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible.”

Journalist and author Christopher Rufo posted the letter from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the Children’s Hospital Association to Garland.

Read the full story