Michael Patrick Leahy: Elon Musk-Donald Trump Conversation on X Was a ‘Game Changer in Political Dialogue and Communication’

MPL Speaking

Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star, said the conversation between billionaire and owner of X Corp. Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump on the social media platform X was a “game changer in political dialogue and communication.”

On Monday evening, Trump and Musk held a two-hour conversation via X Space, which has since been viewed over a billion times.

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Venezuelan Dictator Suspends X After Sparring with Elon Musk

Nicolas Maduro

Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro temporarily banned X from the country on Thursday after accusing the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, of using it to stoke opposition against him.

Maduro declared himself the victor in the country’s July 28 elections, despite credible concerns that the race was rigged against his political opposition. Musk has been publicly critical of Maduro’s refusal to step down from power, and Maduro has now suspended X from Venezuela in retaliation.

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X Sues Global Alliance for Responsible Media over ‘Illegal Boycott’

Linda Yaccarino Madrazo

Linda Yaccarino, the Chief Executive Officer of Elon Musk-owned X, announced Tuesday that the company is filing a lawsuit against a group called Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).

“After a career in media and advertising, I thought I had seen everything. Then I read the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s report entitled ‘GARM’s (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) Harm’ last month. The report disclosed that their investigation had found evidence of an illegal boycott against many companies, including X,” Yaccarino said. 

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Trump Blasts Facebook, Google for ‘Wrongly Censored’ Photo of Assassination Attempt

Donald Trump in front of Google headquarters (composite image)

Former President Donald Trump blasted Facebook and Google Tuesday after Facebook admitted it had censored photos of Trump’s assassination attempt, images widely seen as a major moment and rallying point for the Trump campaign.

Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, began posting online this week that Google searches for Trump’s assassination, including the photo, were not being autocompleted like other searches. They also posted screenshots saying that searches for Trump turned up news for Trump’s opponent, Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

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Musk Denies News Reports He’s Donating $45 Million a Month to Trump-Aligned PAC

Elon Musk

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says news reports that he is contributing $45 million a month to a pro-Donald Trump political action committee are false.

“What’s been reported in the media is simply not true. I’m not donating $45 million a month to Trump,” Musk said during an interview Monday with Jordan Peterson, a conservative Canadian psychologist and YouTube star.

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Seismic Shift for Trump in 2024 Race as Democrats’ Rhetoric, Presidential Debate, Lawfare Backfire

Donald Trump and JD Vance at RNC

A seismic shift has occurred in the 2024 presidential race as the Democrats’ rhetoric, debate performance, and persistent lawfare against former President Donald Trump have appeared to backfire on them, with support for him continuing to increase, including after the assassination attempt.

Trump has been called a “threat to democracy” by Democrats, charged with numerous felony counts in federal and state cases, debated President Joe Biden with CNN moderators, and survived an assassination attempt, all of which have appeared to backfire on Democrats in the presidential race and increase the former president’s popularity as he runs to return to the White House.

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Elon Musk Reportedly Says He’ll Unleash Around $45 Million a Month Toward Pro-Trump Super PAC

Elon Musk and Donald Trump (composite image)

Billionaire Elon Musk reportedly said he plans to commit around $45 million a month to a super political action committee (PAC) helping to elect former President Donald Trump into office come this November.

Sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal about the billionaire’s plans to further his support for the American PAC, the outlet reported. Other figures who are additionally involved in backing the group includes Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, cryptocurrency billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, former U.S. ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft and her husband Chief Executive of Alliance Resource Partners, Joe Craft.

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Warning Signs About Secret Service Emerged Months Before Trump Assassination Attempt

Secret Service

Driving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris by an undetected bomb. Refusing extra resources for a presidential candidate. Admitting an agent on a White House detail assaulted her supervisor.

Long before the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday night such focused a harsh light on the Secret Service, the presidential security agency was already facing difficult questions about its capability, training, recruitment and emphasis on diversity.

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Elon Musk Endorses Trump After Assassination Attempt, Leads Flood of Calls for Secret Service Resignations

Elon Musk, Donald Trump

Billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of the social media platform X, endorsed former President Donald Trump on Saturday after a gunman attempted to assassinate the former president during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk later called for Secret Service resignations in the wake of the shooting, which left one rally attendee dead and a second injured.

Musk posted a video of the attempted assassination in to X, where he received more than 55 million views at press time, and wrote, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.”

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Election Integrity Becomes More Mainstream Despite Democratic Opposition

Voter Registration

Election-integrity policies are increasing gaining mainstream appeal and acceptance, despite Democrats opposing them under their repeated claim that they are only part of right-wing falsehoods.

From preventing non-citizen voting in U.S. elections to voter ID, Democrats have largely opposed a wide range of election integrity policies that a majority of Americans believe are necessary for the security of elections.

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Elon Musk Reportedly Makes ‘Sizable’ Donation to Pro-Trump Super PAC

Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Billionaire Elon Musk reportedly made a “sizable” donation to a super political action committee (PAC) helping to elect former President Donald Trump for the 2024 race, according to sources speaking on anonymity to Bloomberg.

The alleged super PAC donation from Musk was to a low-profile group known as America PAC, sources familiar with the matter told the outlet. While it is not confirmed how much the reported donation was for, the PAC is expected to reveal its list of donors on July 15.

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Commentary: TikTok and Instagram Turned Me into a Leftist, but X Helped Me Escape

Black Lives Matter Rally

Social media plays a significant role in shaping the opinions of those 35 and under — it’s the primary news source for most in that age group, one survey found.

Some stats report that daily screen time for 16- to 24-year-olds is nearly eight hours among females and seven hours among males. To put that in perspective — that’s equivalent to the average time in a school day.

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Elon Musk Reportedly Engaged in Campaign to Influence Elites Against Biden

Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Billionaires Elon Musk and Nelson Peltz are reportedly involved in an ongoing campaign in powerful networks to persuade influential business executives nationwide not to back President Joe Biden’s reelection effort, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Musk, who owns social media platform X, is a prominent critic of Biden and has faced many investigations stemming from the current president’s administration since purchasing the company, which was formerly called Twitter. Musk and others who share his political views have been organizing meetings to target Biden, according to individuals familiar with the discussions, the WSJ reported.

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Billionaire-Funded Media Matters Lays Off Staff

A far-left media organization, initially funded by billionaire George Soros and known for labeling conservatives as “racists,” has laid off several of its staff members. 

“We’re confronting a legal assault on multiple fronts and given how rapidly the media landscape is shifting, we need to be extremely intentional about how we allocate resources in order to stay effective,” said Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. Nobody does what Media Matters does. So, we’re taking this action now to ensure that we are sustainable, sturdy and successful for whatever lies ahead.”

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Labor Board’s Pro-Union Ruling Could Have Devastating Consequences for Free Speech

Construction worker

A judge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last week ruled in favor of a case that has serious implications for free speech by employers when talking about unions, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Judge Brian Gee found that the NLRB was correct in its assertion that certain comments made in interviews in 2022 by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy violated federal labor law amid a national unionization campaign at the company. Jassy’s comments were about how union members would be “better off” without a union because there would be less red tape between employees and management, and came as the Biden administration has pushed to promote unionization. However, the judge’s decision could significantly chill free speech.

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Tesla Reports One of Its Worst Quarters in Years in Latest Sign of Trouble for EV Market

Tesla Factory

Tesla disclosed a shaky earnings report to the public on Tuesday in the latest sign of weakness in the U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market.

The EV maker’s revenue for the first quarter of this year came in nearly 10 percent below its revenue for the first quarter of 2023, marking the largest decline the company has seen since 2012, according to its quarterly report and CNBC. Tesla’s net income also fell by about 55 percent relative to 2023, and the company warned investors that “volume growth rate may be notably lower than the growth rate achieved in 2023.”

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‘Clear Violation of the Law’: Biden’s Multi-Billion Dollar Broadband Plan Defies Congressional Mandate, Experts Say

Joe Biden

The Biden administration’s program to expand access to broadband internet may run afoul of the law that created it, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the Department of Commerce, is responsible for allocating $42.5 billion in funds intended to bolster the United States’ broadband internet infrastructure through the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program (BEAD) program. The agency, in a move to expand high-speed internet access to low-income communities, has been attempting to force states to adopt price controls for broadband services provided through the new projects, a strategy experts say could be illegal.

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Alleged CIA Officer Caught on Camera Describing How Intelligence Community Sets Up Regime Opponents

Gavin O'Blennis

A man who claims to be with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was caught on camera detailing to an undercover journalist how the intelligence community takes out the regime’s political opponents.

Gavin O’Blennis, an alleged Contracting Officer for the CIA, also worked for the FBI from May 2021 to December 2022 as an operation technician and procurement specialist, according to his LinkedIn account.  From there, he went to the Department of Homeland Security where he worked as an immigrations Services Analyst in Minneapolis, Minnesota, according to his LinkedIn.

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Brazilian Judge Orders Criminal Probe of Elon Musk as They Tussle Over ‘Fake News’ Online

Musk EU

A Brazilian judge ordered the government to carry out a criminal probe of Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday, according to multiple media reports.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered the inclusion of Musk in a probe into alleged “fake news,” accusing Musk of “obstruction,” CBS News reported. Musk announced his intention to defy orders from de Moraes to censor the accounts Saturday, then pinned a post urging users to acquire a VPN app to ensure access to the social media site.

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Commentary: Elon Musk Is Right, We Are in a Fight to the Death for Free Speech

Elon Musk

Elon Musk on March 21 in a post on the X platform outlined what he called “centrist” positions on issues like securing the border, protecting American cities, reducing federal spending, ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) reverse discrimination policies, ending youth transgender surgeries and protecting freedom of speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution, saying these are not “right-wing” positions.

Musk wrote, “This is a battle to the death with the anti-civilizational woke mind virus. My positions are centrist: … Secure borders … Safe & clean cities … Don’t bankrupt America with spending … Racism against any race is wrong … No sterilization below age of consent … Is this right-wing?” In a second post in the thread, he added, “And, although it shouldn’t need to said, I believe in the Constitution and freedom of speech.”

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Elon Musk Defends Trump and Slams Establishment Media for Taking Quote Out of Context

Donald Trump hold a rally in Ohio

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is defending former President Donald Trump on Sunday after multiple establishment media outlets ran headlines stating that the former president warned the U.S. would see a “bloodbath” if he is not reelected. 

Although Trump did use the word “bloodbath” during a speech in Ohio on Saturday, outlets such as NPR, Politico, The Hill, NBC News, The New York Times and others used the term in headlines without context. Musk said the headlines were “legacy media lies” and he made multiple posts Sunday criticizing their use of the term and stressing the need for context.  

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Commentary: ADL’s Partisanship Harms the Fight Against Antisemitism

Jon Greenblatt

For over a century, the Anti-Defamation League has enjoyed a reputation as the preeminent Jewish organization combating antisemitism and all forms of hate. Its acronym, ADL, has “household name” status—and not just in Jewish homes. This makes its current penchant for partisanship extraordinarily dangerous for, and beyond, the Jewish community.

Last December, Senate Republicans learned that a Joe Biden nominee for a lifetime judicial appointment, Adeel Mangi, was previously a board member and generous supporter of the antisemitic Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers University Law School.

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Senate Democrats Block Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty’s Amendment Barring Illegal Aliens from Being Counted on the Census

The U.S. Senate failed to pass an amendment introduced by U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) that would bar illegal immigrants from being factored into the count for congressional districts and the Electoral College map that determines presidential elections on Friday.

A total of 47 Democrats, three Independents, and one Republican senator voted against the amendment, which failed to pass by a 45-51 vote.

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Musk’s SpaceX Has Deep Ties with U.S. Intelligence Agencies

Space X Building

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has forged a close relationship with the U.S. military and intelligence community and plans to expand contracts with the government, including a secretive project known as Starshield, The Wall Street Journal reported.

SpaceX has rocketed past the U.S. military and other commercial firms to become a leading entity in the space launch competition, and its success has attracted the attention of major U.S. military and intelligence agencies, according to the outlet. Starshield, just one example of the deepening ties between the commercial and government space, supplies government clients with satellites capable of secure communications and data collection with different kinds of observation units, the WSJ reported, citing a website made public in 2022.

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Elon Musk Says His Brain Chip Allowed Patient to Move Object with His Mind

Surgery

Billionaire Elon Musk says his company Neuralink’s first human brain chip patient is not experiencing any negative effects and is controlling a computer mouse using their mind.

Neuralink successfully implanted the patient in January, Musk announced on X, formerly known as Twitter. He provided an update on the patient during an X Spaces conversation Monday that the patient has recovered well and is able to control a computer mouse with his mind.

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Commentary: Far from Environmentalists’ ‘Immoral’ Claim – We Need Children Now More than Ever

New Born Baby

In a recent television interview, environmental activist Donnachadh McCarthy informed the public that having more than two kids is selfish. McCarthy states in the interview that humanity has destroyed 70 percent of “nature” in one generation, presumably due to our so-called carbon footprint, although he doesn’t explain exactly how this has occurred.

“There’s a moral issue here,” he says. “How can we pass that on to the next generation? Every child in an industrial country like ours has around 505 hundred tonnes of carbon over their lifetime. That’s equivalent to 1000 years of electricity for a household. So each child has an impact, and we’re saying one is great, two is plenty, and three is selfish.”

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Former IRS Contractor Charles Littlejohn Sentenced to 5 Years for Releasing Trump Tax Records

Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday after leaking former President Donald Trump’s tax records, according to NBC News.

Littlejohn, 38, was charged in September 2023 with one count of disclosing information from a tax return for a government official, and he pleaded guilty in October to leaking 10 years of Trump’s tax records to The New York Times. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes sentenced Littlejohn to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, according to NBC News.

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Commentary: DC Appellate Judges Use ‘Unprecedented Approach’ to Get Trump’s Twitter Files

Trump DC

In January 2023, two months after his appointment as special counsel, Jack Smith applied for a search warrant to obtain all of the data associated with Donald Trump’s long-dormant Twitter account. Smith sought not just public posts but direct messages, drafted and deleted posts, and the identity of any individual with access to the account. Smith also asked for “all users [Trump’s account] has followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked, and all users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” Trump’s account.

The application was stunning in scope with no justification as to why the government needed such a limitless trove of information—particularly one that clearly ran afoul of Trump’s right to assert executive privilege. So, Smith neatly settled that matter by additionally asking for a nondisclosure order that prevented Twitter from notifying Trump about the search warrant for 180 days.

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Commentary: Moderna Came Up with a Vaccine Against Vaccine Dissent

Moderna Vaccine

Finances at the vaccine manufacturer Moderna began to fall almost as quickly as they had risen, as most Americans resisted getting yet another COVID booster shot. The pharmaceutical company, whose pioneering mRNA vaccine had turned it from small startup to biotech giant worth more than $100 billion in just a few years, reported a third-quarter loss last year of $3.6 billion, as most Americans refused to get another COVID booster shot.

In a September call aimed at shoring up investors, Moderna’s then-chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, attributed some of the hesitancy pummeling Moderna’s numbers to uninformed vaccine skeptics. “Despite some misinformation,” Garay said, COVID-19 still drove significant hospitalizations. “It really is a vaccine that’s relevant across all age groups,” she insisted.

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European Union to Investigate Elon Musk and X over Possible Violations of Social Media Laws

Musk EU

On Monday, the European Union (EU) formally announced that it would be launching an investigation into X, the platform formally known as Twitter, over alleged violations of laws meant to crack down on free speech.

According to ABC News, the investigation will be the first one of its kind under new regulations passed by the 27-nation European bloc. In a post on X, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement that “Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act.

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Commentary: Government Cannot Become Big Brother

Anyone who lived through 2020 observed that some messages received treatment online that stood in stark contrast to other messages. Conservative voices and messages were censored and banned, while progressive voices and messages flowed freely. If a person spoke against COVID-19 lockdowns—and later vaccines—there was a good chance that a social media platform would take down the post. If one were to suggest that suspicious activities occurred surrounding the 2020 election, the label “misinformation” might appear.

The primary vehicle to censor internet speech is to label disfavored messages as dis-, mis-, or mal-information. While the category of malinformation is seemingly the most offensive – true information that government censors believe lacks sufficient “context” – the other categories can be just as malignant. Mis- and disinformation require someone to determine what is true and what is not.

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Tesla Issues Recall for Almost All U.S. Vehicles After Government Probe

Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla filed a safety recall for over 2 million vehicles with federal regulators following a two-year investigation into the company’s autopilot feature, according to an announcement from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Wednesday.

The Tesla recall covers 2.03 million vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, Model X and Model S, made between Oct. 5, 2012 and Dec. 7, 2023, over concerns with their autopilot feature enabling driver misuse through a lack of engagement while operating the vehicle, according to a document from the NHTSA. The recall covers nearly all Tesla vehicles in the U.S. and is one of many actions taken by the NHTSA around Tesla’s autopilot feature, with the agency contending that the feature’s name is misleading as drivers still have to be engaged during its use, according to The Associated Press.

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Commentary: If Your Kids Aren’t Happy at School, Find Them Another One

“I hated going to school when I was a kid,” said Elon Musk in a 2015 interview. “It was torture.”

When deciding how his own children would be educated, Musk rejected traditional schooling and created his own project-based microschool, Ad Astra, in 2014, on his SpaceX campus. “The kids really love going to school,” said Musk about Ad Astra in that same interview, adding that “they actually think vacations are too long as they want to go back to school.” In 2020, Ad Astra evolved into the fully online school, Astra Nova, and its popular math enrichment spin-off, Synthesis.

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Judge Recuses Himself from X Suit Against Media Matters

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman on Tuesday announced that he would recuse himself from a lawsuit against Media Matters for America (MMFA) filed by social media company X.

Pittman did not state a reason for his recusal, The Hill reported. Elon Musk’s X sued the watchdog group over an article in published that featured images of ads for the platform’s major advertisers next to antisemitic and pro-Nazi content.

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Commentary: Elon Musk Is Going ‘Thermonuclear’

Elon Musk is going “thermonuclear.”

No, this has nothing to do with SpaceX or any of his other wild technology projects – but it’s how Musk described the lawsuit he was filing against Media Matters for America this week. The lawsuit is in response to a Media Matters report last week that X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter, was placing ads for major brands such as Apple and IBM next to “pro-Nazi content.” After some prodding from Media Matters, within a day of their report, a slew of major corporations, such as IBM, Disney, Comcast, Sony, NBC, and Warner Brothers, announced they were pulling ads from X.

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Elon Musk’s Brain Chip Company Is Officially Recruiting Humans for Testing

Billionaire Elon Musk’s brain chip company Neuralink is officially recruiting human beings for a clinical trial, the biotech firm announced on Tuesday.

The trial will be open to individuals with quadriplegia resulting from cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Neuralink announced on its website. It seeks to assess the brain implant’s safety, the performance of its “surgical robot” and gauge the chip’s effectiveness in allowing paralyzed people to influence external devices through their thoughts.

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Elon Musk’s X Sues California over Alleged First Amendment Violations

Elon Musk’s X Corp. sued California to block a law requiring social media companies to publish their content moderation policies, alleging it violates the First Amendment and coerces censorship.

X, formerly known as Twitter, asserted that California’s Assembly Bill 587 infringes upon its freedom of speech under the First Amendment and California’s state constitution, according to court documents. The law mandates social media companies release reports on how they moderate issues including hate speech, extremism, disinformation and misinformation.

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Conservative Political Commentator Tucker Carlson to Headline Ohio Christian Fundraiser

Conservative political commentator, writer, and television personality Tucker Carlson will deliver the keynote address at a gala fundraiser thrown by the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV) in Cleveland, Ohio, next month.

The Cleveland Celebration Gala for the Center for Christian Virtue, Ohio’s largest Christian public policy organization, will take place at the Cleveland Marriott Downtown at Key Tower, on September 21st. According to the Center for Christian Virtue, it will be an evening of music, inspiration, and fellowship. 

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‘We’re Paying People to Hate America’: Musk And Ramaswamy Blast Department of Education

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Twitter owner Elon Musk ripped the current education system in the United States Friday, saying that taxpayers were “paying people to hate America.”

Ramaswamy and Musk took part in a Twitter Spaces forum where Ramaswamy blasted the Department of Education for using funding as an incentive for schools to use certain theories in curricula. Ramaswamy outlined plans to shut down that department during a July 20 forum in New Hampshire.

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